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THE BUILDERS 


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THE BUILDERS 


A STORY AND STUDY 
OF MASONRY 


BY 
JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, Lirt. D. 


GRAND LODGE OF IOWA 


When Iwasa King and a Mason— 
A master proved and skilled, 

i cleared me ground fora palace 
Such asa King should dbutld. 

I decreed and cut down to my levels, 
Presently, under the sult, 

I came on the wreck of a palace 
Such asa King had built! 

—KIPLING 


x 


CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA 
THE TORCH PRESS 
NINETEEN FIFTEEN 


Copyrricnut, 1914 
By JosernH Fort Nrewron 


first Printing, December, 1914 


Bentige 1a tles gS IG, Wergen 


To 
The Memory of 


THEODORE SUTTON PARVIN 


Founder of the Library of the Grand Lodge 
of lowa, with Reverence and Gratitude; to 


LOUIS BLOCK 


Past Grand Master of Masons in Iowa, dear Friend — 
and Fellow-worker, who initiated and inspired 
this study, with Love and Goodwill; and 
to the 


YOUNG MASONS 


Our Hope and Pride, for whom 
this book was written 
With 
Fraternal Greeting 


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Me Oat ih i Mad . e i 


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THE ANTEROOM 


Fourteen years ago the writer of this volume en- 
tered the temple of Freemasonry, and that date 
stands out in memory as one of the most significant 
days in his life. There was a little spread on the 
night of his raising, and, as is the custom, the can- 
didate was asked to give his impressions of the Or- 
der. Among other things, he made request to know 
if there was any little book which would tell a young 
man the things he would most like to know about 
Masonry — what it was, whence it came, what it 
teaches, and what it is trying to do in the world? 
No one knew of such a book at that time, nor has 
any been found to meet a need which many must 
have felt before and since. By an odd coincidence, 
it has fallen to the lot of the author to write the little 
book for which he made request fourteen years ago. 

This bit of reminiscence explains the purpose of 
the present volume, and every book must be judged 
by its spirit and purpose, not less than by its style 
and contents. Written as a commission from the 
Grand Lodge of Iowa, and approved by that Grand 
body, a copy of this book is to be presented to every 


Vili THE BUILDERS 


man upon whom the degree of Master Mason is con- 
ferred within this Grand Jurisdiction. Naturally 
this intention has determined the method and ar- 
rangement of the book, as well as the matter it con- 
tains; its aim being to tell a young man entering 
the order the antecedents of Masonry, its develop- 
ment, its philosophy, its mission, and its ideal. Keep- 
ing this purpose always in mind, the effort has been 
to prepare a brief, simple, and vivid account of the 
origin, growth, and teaching of the Order, so writ- 
ten as to provoke a deeper interest in and a more 
earnest study of its story and its service to mankind. 

No work of this kind has been undertaken, so far 
as is known, by any Grand Lodge in this country or. 
abroad — at least, not since the old Pocket Com- 
panion, and other such works in the earlier times; 
and this is the more strange from the fact that the 
need of it is so obvious, and its possibilities so fruit- 
ful and important. Every one who has looked into 
the vast literature of Masonry must often have felt 
the need of a concise, compact, yet comprehensive 
survey to clear the path and light the way. Especial- 
ly must those feel such a need who are not accus- 
tomed to traverse long and involved periods of his- 
tory, and more especially those who have neither the 
time nor the opportunity to sift ponderous volumes 
to find out the facts. Much of our literature — in- 


THE ANTEROOM ix 


deed, by far the larger part of it — was written be- 
fore the methods of scientific study had arrived, and 
while it fascinates, it does not convince those who 
are used to the more critical habits of research. 
Consequently, without knowing it, some of our most 
earnest Masonic writers have made the Order a tar- 
get for ridicule by their extravagant claims as to its 
antiquity. They did not make it clear in what sense 
‘it is ancient, and not a little satire has been aimed at 
Masons for their gullibility in accepting as true the 
wildest and most absurd legends. Besides, no his- 
tory of Masonry has been written in recent years, 
and some important material has come to light in the 
world of historical and archzological scholarship, 
making not a little that has hitherto been obscure 
more clear; and there is need that this new knowl- 
edge be related to what was already known. While 
modern research aims at accuracy, too often its re- 
sults are dry pages of fact, devoid of literary beauty 
and spiritual appeal — a skeleton without the warm 
robe of flesh and blood. Striving for accuracy, the 
writer has sought to avoid making a dusty chronicle 
of facts and figures, which few would have the heart 
to follow, with what success the reader must decide. 
Such a book is not easy to write, and for two rea- 
sons: it is the history of a secret Order, much of 
whose lore is not to be written, and it covers a be 


bs THE BUILDERS 


wildering stretch of time, asking that the contents 
of innumerable volumes — many of them huge, dis- 
jointed, and difficult to digest — be compact within 
a small space. Nevertheless, if it has required a 
prodigious labor, it is assuredly worth while in be- 
half of the young men who throng our temple gates, 
as well as for those who are to come after us. Every 
line of this book has been written in the conviction 
that the real history of Masonry is great enough, 
and its simple teaching grand enough, without the 
embellishment of legend, much less of occultism. It 
proceeds from first to last upon the assurance that 
all that we need to do is to remove the scaffolding 
from the historic temple of Masonry and let it stand 
out in the sunlight, where all men can see its beauty 
and symmetry, and that it will command the respect 
of the most critical and searching intellects, as well 
as the homage of all who love mankind. By this 
faith the long study has been guided; in this confi- 
dence it has been completed. 

To this end the sources of Masonic scholarship, 
stored in the library of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, 
have been explored, and the highest authorities have 
been cited wherever there is uncertainty — copious 
references serving not only to substantiate the state- 
ments made, but also, it is hoped, to guide the reader 
into further and more detailed research. Also, in 


THE ANTEROOM xi 


respect of issues still open to debate and about which 
differences of opinion obtain, both sides have been 
given a hearing, so far as space would allow, that 
the student may weigh and decide the question for 
himself. Like all Masonic students of recent times, 
the writer is richly indebted to the great Research 
Lodges of England — especially to the Quatuor 
Coronati Lodge, No. 2076 — without whose pro- 
- ceedings this study would have been much harder to 
write, if indeed it could have been written at all. 
Such men as Gould, Hughan, Speth, Crawley, 
Thorp, to name but a few —not forgetting Pike, 
Parvin, Mackey, Fort, and others in this country — 
deserve the perpetual gratitude of the fraternity. 
If, at times, in seeking to escape from mere legend, 
some of them seemed to go too far toward another 
extreme — forgetting that there is much in Ma- 
sonry that cannot be traced by name and date — it 
was but natural in their effort in behalf of authentic 
history and accurate scholarship. Alas, most of 
those named belong now to a time that is gone and 
to the people who are no longer with us here, but 
they are recalled by an humble student who would 
pay them the honor belonging to great men and 
great Masons. 

This book is divided into three parts, as every- 
thing Masonic should be: Prophecy, History, and 


xil THE BUILDERS 


Interpretation. The first part has to do with the 
hints and foregleams of Masonry in the early his- 
tory, tradition, mythology, and symbolism of the 
race — finding its foundations in the nature and 
need of man, and showing how the stones wrought 
out by time and struggle were brought from afar to 
the making of Masonry as we know it. The second 
part is a story of the order of builders through the 
centuries, from the building of the Temple of Sol- 
omon to the organization of the mother Grand Lodge 
of England, and the spread of the Order all over the 
civilized world. The third part is a statement and 
exposition of the faith of Masonry, its philosophy, 
its religious meaning, its genius, and its ministry to 
the individual, and through the individual to society 
and the state. Such is a bare outline of the purpose, 
method, plan, and spirit of the work, and if these be 
kept in mind it is believed that it will tell its story 
and confide its message. 

When a man thinks of our mortal lot — its great- 
ness and its pathos, how much has been wrought out 
in the past, and how binding is our obligation to pre- 
serve and enrich the inheritance of humanity — 
there comes over him a strange warming of the 
heart toward all his fellow workers; and especially 
toward the young, to whom we must soon entrust all 
that we hold sacred. All through these pages the 


PREFACE Xili 


wish has been to make the young Mason feel in what — 
a great and benign tradition he stands, that he may 
the more earnestly strive to be a Mason not merely 
in form, but in faith, in spirit, and still more, in 
character; and so help to realize somewhat of the 
beauty we all have dreamed — lifting into the light 
the latent powers and unguessed possibilities of this 
the greatest order of men upon the earth. Everyone 
-can do a little, and if each does his part faithfully 
the sum of our labors will be very great, and we 
shall leave the world fairer than we found it, richer 
in faith, gentler in justice, wiser in pity — for we 
pass this way but once, pilgrims seeking a country, 
even a City that hath foundations. 

JaREN: 
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, September 7, 1914. 


oY. be + 
Fe ARN LANA PAM URY eT RENNER 
Ser LALRYE Sere at ‘ 


TRAP MERE ATT HIRE AS 
Lh Ue ee Os 


Bite h yi 
BY a wi bee, 


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Ld OF 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Tue ANTE-Room 

Part I — PropHECY 
Cuapter IJ. THe FouNDATIONS . 

- CHapter II. THe Worxkinc Toors 
CuHapter III. Tur Drama oF FAITH 
Cuaprer IV. Tue Secret Doctring 
Cuaprer V. THE CoLleci¢. 

Part II — History 
Cuapter I. Free-Masons . 

CHAPTER IJ. FELLOWCRAFTS 

CHAPTER III. Acceptep MAsons . 
CuHaApPTER IV. GRAND LODGE oF ENGLAND 
CuHapter V. UNIVERSAL MASONRY 

Part [I] — INTERPRETATION 
CuaptEr I. Wuat Is MAsonry . 
Cuapter IJ. Tur Masonic PHILOSOPHY 
Cuapter III. Tue Spirit ofr Masonry 

BIBLIOGRAPHY . 

INDEX 


127 
153 


201 


239 
259 
283 
301 
306 


——— 


- 


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Part I—Prophecy 


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THE FOUNDATIONS 


By Symbols is man guided and commanded, 
made happy, made wretched. He everywhere 
finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recog- 
nized as such or not recognized: the Universe is 
but one vast Symbol of God; nay, if thou wilt 
have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God; 
is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to 
Sense of the mystic God-given force that is in 
him; a Gospel of Freedom, which he, the Messiah 
of Nature, preaches, as he can, by word and act? 
Not a Hut he builds but ts the visible embodiment 
of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible 
things; but is, in the transcendental sense, sym- 
bolical as well as real. 

— Tuomas CarLyLe£, Sartor Resartus 


CrpAP ie hie 


The Foundations 


WO arts have altered the face of the earth and 

given shape to the life and thought of man, 
Agriculture and Architecture. Of the two, it would 
be hard to know which has been the more intimately 
interwoven with the inner life of humanity; for man 
is not only a planter and a builder, but a mystic and 
a thinker. For such a being, especially in primitive 
times, any work was something more than itself; it 
was a truth found out. In becoming useful it at- 
tained some form, enshrining at once a thought and 
a mystery. Our present study has to do with the 
second of these arts, which has been called the ma- 
trix of civilization. 

When we inquire into origins and seek the initial 
force which carried art forward, we find two funda- 
mental factors — physical necessity and spiritual 
aspiration. Of course, the first great impulse of all 
architecture was need, honest response to the de- 
mand for shelter; but this demand included a Home 
for the Soul, not less than a roof over the head. 


6 THE BUILDERS 


Even in this response to primary need there: was 
something spiritual which carried it beyond provi- 
sion for the body; as the men of Egypt, for instance, 
wanted an indestructible resting-place, and so built 
the pyramids. As Capart says, prehistoric art 
shows that this utilitarian purpose was in almost 
every case blended with a religious, or at least a 
magical, purpose.* The spiritual instinct, in seeking 
to recreate types and to set up more sympathetic 
relations with the universe, led to imitation, to ideas 
of proportion, to the passion for beauty, and to the 
effort after perfection. 

Man has been always a builder, and nowhere has 
he shown himself more significantly than in the 
buildings he has erected. When we stand before 
them — whether it be a mud hut, the house of a 
cliff-dweller stuck like the nest of a swallow on the 
side of a cafion, a Pyramid, a Parthenon, or a Pan- 
theon — we seem to read into his soul. The build- 
er may have gone, perhaps ages before, but here he 
has left something of himself, his hopes, his fears, 
his ideas, his dreams. Even in the remote recesses 
of the Andes, amidst the riot of nature, and where 
man is now a mere savage, we come upon the re- 
mains of vast, vanished civilizations, where art and 
science and religion reached unknown heights. 

1 Primitive Art in Egypt. 


THE FOUNDATIONS 7 


Wherever humanity has lived and wrought, we find 
the crumbling ruins of towers, temples, and tombs, 
monuments of its industry and its aspiration. Also, 
whatever else man may have been — cruel, tyran- 
nous, vindictive — his buildings always have refer- 
ence to religion. They bespeak a vivid sense of the 
Unseen and his awareness of his relation to it. Of 
a truth, the story of the Tower of Babel is more 
than a myth. Man has ever been trying to build 
to heaven, embodying his prayer and his dream in 
brick and stone. 

For there are two sets of realities — material and 
spiritual — but they are so interwoven that all prac- 
tical laws are exponents of morallaws. Such is the 
thesis which Ruskin expounds with so much insight 
and eloquence in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, 
in which he argues that the laws of architecture are 
moral laws, as applicable to the building of charac- 
ter as to the construction of cathedrals. He finds 
those laws to be Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, 
Life, Memory, and, as the crowning grace of all, 
that principle to which Polity owes its stability, Life 
its happiness, Faith its acceptance, and Creation its 
continuance — Obedience. He holds that there is 
no such thing as liberty, and never can be. The 
stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it 
not. Man fancies that he has freedom, but if he 


8 THE BUILDERS 


, would use the word Loyalty instead of Liberty, he 
‘.| would be nearer the truth, since it is by obedience 
to the laws of life and truth and beauty that he at- 

_ tains to what he calls liberty. 

Throughout that brilliant essay, Ruskin shows 
how the violation of moral laws spoils the beauty of 
architecture, mars its usefulness, and makes it un- 
stable. He points out, with all the variations of 
emphasis, illustration, and appeal, that beauty is 
what is imitated from natural forms, consciously or 
unconsciously, and that what is not so derived, but 
depends for its dignity upon arrangement received 
from the human mind, expresses, while it reveals, 
the quality of the mind, whether it be noble or ig- 
noble. Thus: 


All building, therefore, shows man either as gathering 
or governing ; and the secrets of his success are his know- 
ing what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two 
great intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one consist- 
ing in a just and humble veneration of the works of God 
upon earth, and the other in an understanding of the do- 
minion over those works which has been vested in man.* 


What our great prophet of art thus elaborated so 
eloquently, the early men forefelt by instinct, dimly 
it may be, but not less truly. If architecture was 
born of need it soon showed its magic quality, and 


1 Chapter iii, aphorism 2. 


THE FOUNDATIONS 9 


all true building touched depths of feeling and 
opened gates of wonder. No doubt the men who 
first balanced one stone over two others must have 
looked with astonishment at the work of their 
hands, and have worshiped the stones they had set 
up. This element of mystical wonder and awe last- 
ed long through the ages, and is still felt when work 
is done in the old way by keeping close to nature, 
necessity, and faith. From the first, ideas of sacred- 
ness, of sacrifice, of ritual rightness, of magic stabil- 
ity, of likeness to the universe, of perfection of form 
and proportion glowed in the heart of the builder, 
and guided his arm. Wren, philosopher as he was, 
decided that the delight of man in setting up col- 
umns was acquired through worshiping in the 
groves of the forest; and modern research has come 
to much the same view, for Sir Arthur Evans shows 
that in the first European age columns were gods. 
All over Europe the early morning of architecture 
was spent in the worship of great stones.* 

If we go to old Egypt, where the art of building 
seems first to have gathered power, and where its 
remains are best preserved, we may read the ideas 
of the earliest artists. Long before the dynastic 
period a strong people inhabited the land who de- 
veloped many arts which they handed on to the 

1 Architecture, by Lethaby, chap. i. 


10 THE BUILDERS 


pyramid-builders. Although only semi-naked sav- 
ages using flint instruments in a style much like the 
bushmen, they were the root, so to speak, of a won- 
derful artistic stock. Of the Egyptians Herodotus 
said, ‘“They gather the fruits of the earth with less 
labor than any other people.’ With agriculture 
and settled life came trade and stored-up energy 
which might essay to improve on caves and pits and 
other rude dwellings. By the Nile, perhaps, man 
first aimed to overpass the routine of the barest 
need, and obey his soul. There he wrought out 
beautiful vases of fine marble, and invented square 
building. | | 

At any rate, the earliest known structure actually 
discovered, a prehistoric tomb found in the sands at 
Hieraconpolis, is already right-angled. As Letha- 
by reminds us, modern people take squareness very 
much for granted as being a self-evident form, but 
the discovery of the square was a great step in 
geometry.’ It opened a new era in the story of the 
builders. Early inventions must have seemed like 
revelations, as indeed they were; and it is not 
strange that skilled craftsmen were looked upon as 
magicians. If man knows as much as he does, the 
discovery of the Square was a great event to the 
primitive mystics of the Nile. Very early it became 

1 Architecture, by Lethaby, chap. ii. 


tf 


Pe THE FOUNDATIONS II 


an emblem of truth, justice, and righteousness, and 
so it_remains to this day though uncountable ages 
have passed. Simple, familiar, eloquent, it brings 
from afar a sense of the wonder of the dawn, and 
it still teaches a lesson which we find it hard to 
learn. So also the cube, the compasses, and the 
keystone, each a great advance for those to whom 
architecture was indeed “building touched with emo- 
tion,” as showing that its laws are the laws of the 
Eternal. 

Maspero tells us that the temples of Egypt, even 
from earliest times, were built in the image of the 
earth as the builders had imagined it.* For them 
the earth was a sort of flat slab more long than 
wide, and the sky was a ceiling or vault supported 
by four great pillars. The pavement represented 
the earth; the four angles stood for the pillars; the 
ceiling, more often flat, though sometimes curved, 
corresponded to the sky. From the pavement grew 
vegetation, and water plants emerged from the 
water; while the ceiling, painted dark blue, was 
strewn with stars of five points. Sometimes, the 
sun and moon were seen floating on the heavenly 
ocean escorted by the constellations, and the months 
and days. ‘There was a far withdrawn holy place, 
small and obscure, approached through a succession 


1Dawn of Civilization. 


I2 THE BUILDERS 


of courts and columned halls, all so arranged on a 
central axis as to point to the sunrise. Before the 
outer gates were obelisks and avenues of statues. 
Such were the shrines of the old solar religion, so 
oriented that on one day in the year the beams of 
the rising sun, or of some bright star that hailed his 
coming, should stream down the nave and illumine 
the altar.’ 

Clearly, one ideal of the early builders was that 
of sacrifice, as seen in their use of the finest mate- 
rials; and another was accuracy of workmanship. 
Indeed, not a little of the earliest work displayed an 
astonishing technical ability, and such work must 
point to some underlying idea which the workers 
sought to realize. Above all things they sought 
permanence. In later inscriptions relating to build- 
ings, phrases like these occur frequently: “it is such 
as the heavens in all its quarters;”’ “firm as the 
heavens.” Evidently the basic idea was that, as 
the heavens were stable, not to be moved, so a build- 
ing put into proper relation with the universe would 
acquire magical stability. It is recorded that when 
Ikhnaton founded his new city, four boundary 
stones were accurately placed, that so it might be 
exactly square, and thus endure forever. Eternity 
was the ideal aimed at, everything else being sacri- 
ficed for that aspiration. 


1 Dawn of Astronomy, Norman Lockyer. 


THE FOUNDATIONS 13 


How well they realized their dream is shown us 
in the Pyramids, of all monuments of mankind the 
oldest, the most technically perfect, the largest, and 
the most mysterious. Ages come and go, empires 
rise and fall, philosophies flourish and fail, and man 
seeks him out many inventions, but they stand silent 
under the bright Egyptian night, as fascinating as 
they are baffling. An obelisk is simply a pyramid, 
albeit the base has become a shaft, holding aloft the 
oldest emblems of solar faith — a Triangle mounted 
on a Square. When and why this figure became) 
holy no one knows, save as we may conjecture that , 
it was one of those sacred stones which gained its 
sanctity in times far back of all recollection and tra- 
dition, like the Ka’aba at Mecca. Whether it be an 
imitation of the triangle of zodiacal light, seen at 
certain times in the eastern sky at sunrise and sun- 
set, or a feat of masonry used_as_a symbol. of 
Heaven, as the Square was an emblem of Earth, no 
one may affirm.’ In the Pyramid Texts the Sun- 
god, when he created all the other gods, is shown 
sitting on the apex of the sky in the form of a Phoe- 


1Churchward, in his Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man 
(chap. xv), holds that the pyramid was typical of heaven, Shu, 
standing on seven steps, having lifted the sky from the earth in 
the form of a triangle; and that at each point stood one of the 
gods, Sut and Shu at the base, the apex being the Pole Star where 
Horus of the Horizon had his throne. ‘This is, in so far, true; but 
the pyramid emblem was older than Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and 
runs back into an obscurity beyond knowledge. 


14 THE BUILDERS 


nix — that Supreme God to whom two architects, 
Suti and Hor, wrote so noble a hymn of praise.’ 
White with the worship of ages, ineffably beau- 
tiful and pathetic, is the old light-religion of human- 
ity —a sublime nature-mysticism in which Light 
was love and life, and Darkness evil and death. 
For the early man light was the mother of beauty, 
the unveiler of color, the elusive and radiant mys- 
tery of the world, and his speech about it was rev- 
erent and grateful. At the gates of the morning 
he stood with uplifted hands, and the sun sinking in 
the desert at eventide made him wistful in prayer, 
half fear and half hope, lest the beauty return no 
more. His religion, when he emerged from the 
night of animalism, was a worship of the Light — 
his temple hung with stars, his altar a glowing 
flame, his ritual a woven hymn of night and day. 
No poet of our day, not even Shelley, has written 
lovelier lyrics in praise of the Light than those 
hymns of Ikhnaton in the morning of the world.’ 
Memories of this religion of the dawn linger with 


1 Religion and Thought in Egypt, by Breasted, lecture ix. 

2Ikhnaton, indeed, was a grand, solitary, shining figure, “the 
first idealist in history,’ and a poetic thinker in whom the religion 
of Egypt attained its highest reach. Dr. Breasted puts his lyrics 
alongside the poems of Wordsworth and the great passage of 
Ruskin in Modern Painters, as celebrating the divinity of Light 
(Religion and Thought in Egypt, lecture ix). Despite the re- 
venge of his enemies, he stands out as a lonely, heroic, prophetic 
soul — “the first individual in time.” 


THE FOUNDATIONS Is 


us today in the faith that follows the Day-Star from 
on high, and the Sun of Righteousness — One who 
is the Light of the World in life, and the Lamp of 
Poor Souls in the night of death. 


Here, then, are the real foundations of Masonry, |. ' 


both material and moral: in the deep need and as- | 
piration of man, and his creative impulse; in his ° 
instinctive Faith, his quest of the Ideal, and his love 
of the Light. Underneath all his building lay the 
feeling, prophetic of his last and highest thought, 
that the earthly house of his life should be in right 
relation with its heavenly prototype, the world- 
temple — imitating on earth the house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens. If he erected a 
square temple, it was an image of the earth; if he 
built a pyramid, it was a picture of a beauty shown 
him in the sky; as, later, his cathedral was modelled 
after the mountain, and its dim and lofty arch a 
memory of the forest vista — its altar a fireside of 
the soul, its spire a prayer in stone. And as he 
wrought his faith and dream into reality, it was but 
natural that the tools of the builder should become 
emblems of the thoughts of the thinker. Not only 
his tools, but, as we shall see, the very stones with 
which he worked became sacred symbols — the tem- 
ple itself a vision of that House of Doctrine, that 
Home of the Soul, which, though unseen, he is 
building in the midst of the years. 


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hes Aig th eae eu i aa oT io ' 
y ; j ; ; ak as if can M 


Niet 


rieeour rs , 4 . , , -@ » | an ey % 


‘THE WORKING TOOLS — 


It began to shape itself to my intellectual vision 
into something more 1mposing and majestic, sol- 
emnly mysterious and grand. It seemed to me 
like the Pyramids in their loneliness, in whose 
yet undiscovered chambers may be lidden, for the 
enlightenment of coming generations, the sacred 
books of the Egyptians, so long lost to the world; 
like the Sphynx half buried in the desert. 

In tts symbolism, which and its spirit of broth- 
erhood are its essence, Freemasonry is more 
ancient than any of the world’s living religions. 
It has the symbols and doctrines which, older than 
himself, Zarathrustra inculcated; and tt seemed 
to me a spectacle sublime, yet pitiful — the ancient 
Faith of our ancestors holding out to the world 
its symbols once so eloquent, and mutely and in 
vain asking for an interpreter. 

And so I came at last to see that the true great- 
ness and majesty of Freemasonry consist in its 
proprietorship of these and its other symbols; 
and that its symbolism is its soul. 

— ALBERT PIKE, Letter to Gould 


CHAR ER Ly 
The Working Tools 


EVER were truer words than those of Goethe 
in the last lines of Faust, and they echo one 
of the oldest instincts of humanity: “All things 
transitory but as symbols are sent.’”’ From the be- 
ginning man has divined that the things open to his 
senses are more than mere facts, having other and 
hidden meanings. The whole world was close to 
him as an infinite parable, a mystical and prophetic 
scroll the lexicon of which he set himself to find. 
Both he and his world were so made as to convey 
a sense of doubleness, of high truth hinted in hum- 
ble, nearby things. No smallest thing but had its 
skyey aspect which, by his winged and quick-sight- 
ed fancy, he sought to surprise and grasp. 

Let us acknowledge that man was born a poet, his 
mind a chamber of imagery, his world a gallery of 
art. Despite his utmost efforts, he can in nowise 
strip his thought of the flowers and fruits that cling 
to it, withered though they often are. As a fact, 
he has ever been a citizen of two worlds, using the 


20 THE BUILDERS 


scenery of the visible to make vivid the realities of 
the world Unseen. What wonder, then, that trees 
grew in his fancy, flowers bloomed in his faith, and 
the victory of spring over winter gave him hope of 
life after death, while the march of the sun and the 
great stars invited him to “thoughts that wander 
through eternity.” Symbol was his native tongue, 


his first form of speech — as, indeed, it is his last — / ,/ 


whereby he was able to say what else he could not 
have uttered. Such is the fact, and even the lan- 
guage in which we state it is “a dictionary of faded 
metaphors,” the fossil poetry of ages ago. 


I 


That picturesque and variegated maze of the 
early symbolism of the race we cannot study in de- 
tail, tempting as it is. Indeed, so luxuriant was 
that old picture-language that we may easily miss 
our way and get lost in the labyrinth, unless we 


keep to the right path.t First of all, throughout 


1 There are many books in this field, but two may be named: 
The Lost Language of Symbolism, by Bayley, and the Signs and 
Symbols of Primordial Man, by Churchward, each in its own way 
remarkable. The first aspires to be for this field what Frazer’s 
Golden Bough is for religious anthropology, and its dictum is: 
“Beauty is Truth; Truth Beauty.” The thesis of the second is that 
Masonry is founded upon Egyptian eschatology, which may be 
true; but unfortunately the book is too polemical. Both books par 
take of the poetry, if not the confusion, of the subject; but not for 


THE WORKING TOOLS 21 


this study of prophecy let us keep ever in mind a 
very simple and obvious fact, albeit not less won- 
derful because obvious. Socrates made the discov- 
ery — perhaps the greatest ever made — that hu- 
man nature is universal. By his searching ques- 
tions he found out that when men think round a 
problem, and think deeply, they disclose a common 
nature and a common system of truth. So there 
dawned upon him, from this fact, the truth of the 
kinship of mankind and the unity of mind. His in- 
sight is confirmed many times over, whether we 
study the earliest gropings of the human mind or 
set the teachings of the sages side by side. Always 
we find, after comparison, that the final conclusions 
of the wisest minds as to the meaning of life and 
the world are harmonious, if not identical. 

Here is the clue to the striking resemblances be- 
tween the faiths and philosophies of widely sepa- 
rated peoples, and it makes them intelligible while 
adding to their picturesqueness and philosophic in- 
terest. By the same token, we begin to understand 
why the same signs, symbols, and emblems were used 
by all peoples to express their earliest aspiration and 


a world of dust would one clip their wings of fancy and suggestion. 
Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry is unique. When the 
pains of erudition fail to track a fact to its lair, they do not scruple 
to use the divining rod; and the result often passes out of the 
realm of pedestrian chronicle into the world of winged literature. 


22 THE BUILDERS 


thought. We need not infer that one people 
learned them from another, or that there existed a 
mystic, universal order which had them in keeping. 
They simply betray the unity of the human mind, 
and show how and why, at the same stage of cul- 
ture, races far removed from each other came to 
the same conclusions and used much the same sym- 
bols to body forth their thought. Illustrations are 
innumerable, of which a few may be named as ex- 
amples of this unity both of idea and of emblem, 
and also as confirming the insight of the great 
Greek that, however shallow minds may differ, in 
the end all seekers after truth follow a common 
path, comrades in one great quest. 

An example in point, as ancient as it is eloquent, 


“is the idea of the trinity and its emblem, the tri- 


angle. What the human thought of God is de- 
pends on what power of the mind or aspect of life 


-/ man uses as a lens through which to look into the 


mystery of things. Conceived of as the will of the 
world, God is one, and we have the monotheism of 
Moses. Seen through instinct and the kaleidoscope 
of the senses, God is multiple, and the result is poly- 
theism and its gods without number. For the rea- 
as in the faith of Zoroaster and many other cults. 
But when the social life of man becomes the prism 


THE WORKING TOOLS 23 


of faith, God is a trinity of Father, Mother, Child. 
Almost as old as human thought, we find the idea of 
the trinity and its triangle emblem everywhere — 
Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma in India corresponding 
to Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt. No doubt this 
idea underlay the old pyramid emblem, at each cor- 
ner of which stood one of the gods. No mission- 
ary carried this profound truth over the earth. It 
grew out of a natural and universal human experi- 
ence, and is explained by the fact of the unity of 
the human mind and its vision of God through the 
family. 

Other emblems take us back into an antiquity so 
remote that we seem to be walking in the shadow of 
prehistoric time. Of these, the mysterious Swas-_ 
tika is perhaps the oldest, as it is certainly the most 
widely distributed over the earth. As much a tal- 
isman as a symbol, it has been found on Chaldean 
bricks, among the ruins of the city of Troy, in 
Egypt, on vases of ancient Cyprus, on Hittite re- 
mains and the pottery of the Etruscans, in the cave 
temples of India, on Roman altars and Runic mon- 
uments in Britain, in Thibet, China, and Korea, in 
Mexico, Peru, and among the prehistoric burial- 
grounds of North America. There have been 
many interpretations of it. Perhaps the meaning 
most usually assigned to it is that of the Sanskrit 


24 THE BUILDERS 


word having in its roots an intimation of the henef- 
icence of life, to be and well. As such, it 1s a sign 
indicating “that the maze of life may bewilder, but 
a path of light runs through it: Jt 1s well is the 
name of the path, and the key to life eternal is in 
the strange labyrinth for those whom God lead- 
eth.”* Others hold it to have been an emblem of 
the Pole Star whose stability in the sky, and the pro- 
cession of the Ursa Major around it, so impressed 
the ancient world. Men saw the sun journeying 
across the heavens every day in a slightly different 
track, then standing still, as it were, at the solstice, 
and then returning on its way back. They saw the 
moon changing not only its orbit, but its size and 
shape and time of appearing. Only the Pole Star 
remained fixed and stable, and it became, not unnat- 
urally, a light of assurance and the footstool of the 
Most High.* Whatever its meaning, the Swastika 
shows us the efforts of the early man to read the 
riddle of things, and his intuition of a love at the 
heart of life. 
Akin to the Swastika, if not an evolution from it, 
was the Cross, made forever holy by the highest’ 


1The Word in the Pattern, Mrs. G. F. Watts. 

2 The Swastika, Thomas Carr. See essay by the same writer in 
which he shows that the Swastika is the symbol of the Supreme 
Architect of the Universe among Operative Masons today (The 
Lodge of Research, No. 2429, Transactions, 1911-12). 


THE WORKING TOOLS 25 


heroism of Love. When man climbed up out of the 
primeval night, with his face to heaven upturned, 
he had a cross in his hand. Where he got it, why 
he held it, and what he meant by it, no one can con- 
jecture much less affirm.’ Itself a paradox, its arms 
pointing to the four quarters of the earth, it is 
found in almost every part of the world carved on 
coins, altars, and tombs, and furnishing a design for 
temple architecture in Mexico and Peru, in the pa- 
godas of India, not less than in the churches of 
Christ. Ages before our era, even from the remote 
time of the cliff-dweller, the Cross seems to have 
been a symbol of life, though for what reason no 
one knows. More often it was an emblem of eternal 
life,.especially when inclosed.within.a Circle which 
ends not, nor begins — the type of Eternity. Hence 
the Ank Cross or Crux Ansata of Egypt, scepter of 
the Lord of the Dead that never die. There is less 
mystery about the Circle, which was an image of 
the disk of the Sun and a natural symbol of com- 
pleteness, of eternity. With a point within the cen- 
ter it became, as naturally, the emblem of the Eye 
of the World —that All-seeing eye of the eternal 
Watcher of the human scene. 

Square, triangle, cross, circle — oldest symbols 
of humanity, all of them eloquent, each of them 

1 Signs and Symbols, Churchward, chap. xvii. 


26 THE BUILDERS 


pointing beyond itself, as symbols always do, while 
giving form to the invisible truth which they invoke 
and seek to embody. ‘They are beautiful if we have 
eyes to see, serving not merely as chance figures of 
fancy, but as forms of reality as it revealed itself to 
the mind of man. Sometimes we find them united, 
the Square within the Circle, and within that the 
Triangle, and at the center the Cross. Earliest of 
emblems, they show us hints and foregleams of the 
highest faith and philosophy, betraying not only the 
unity of the human mind but its kinship with the 
Eternal — the fact which lies at the root of every 
religion, and is the basis of each. Upon this Faith 
man builded, finding a rock beneath, refusing to 
think of Death as the gigantic coffin-lid of a dull 
and mindless universe descending upon him at last. 


IT 


From this brief outlook upon a wide field, we 
may pass to a more specific and detailed study of | 
the early prophecies of Masonry in the art of the! — 
builder. Always the symbolic must follow the ac-) 
tual, if it is to have reference and meaning, and the 
real is ever the basis of the ideal. By nature an 
Idealist, and living in a world of radiant mystery, it 
was inevitable that man should attach moral and 
spiritual meanings to the tools, laws, and materials 


THE WORKING TOOLS 27 


of building. Even so, in almost every land and in 
the remotest ages we find great and beautiful truth 
hovering about the builder and clinging to his tools.” 
Whether there were organized orders of builders in 
the early times no one can tell, though there may 
have been. No matter; man mixed thought and 
worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones 
and fitted them together he thought out a faith by 
which to live. | 

Not unnaturally, in times when the earth was 
thought to be a Square the Cube had emblematical 
meaning's it could hardly have for us. From earliest 
ages it was a venerated symbol, and the oblong cube 
signified immensity of space from the base of earth 
to the zenith of the heavens. It was a sacred em- 
blem of the Lydian Kubele, known to the Romans in 
after ages as Ceres or Cybele — hence, as some 


1 Here again the literature is voluminous, but not entirely satis- 
factory. A most interesting book is Signs and Symbols of Pri- 
mordial Man, by Churchward, in that it surveys the symbolism of 
the race always with reference to its Masonic suggestion. Vivid 
and popular is Symbols and Legends of Freemasonry, by Finlayson, 
but he often strains facts in order to stretch them over wide gaps 
of time. Dr. Mackey’s Symbolism of Freemasonry, though writ- 
ten more than sixty years ago, remains a classic of the order. Un- 
fortunately the lectures of Albert Pike on Symbolism are not ac- 
cessible to the general reader, for they are rich mines of insight 
and scholarship, albeit betraying his partisanship of the Indo-Aryan 
race. Many minor books might be named, but we need a work 
brought up to date and written in the light of recent research. 


28 THE BUILDERS 


aver, the derivation of the word “cube.” At first 
rough stones were most sacred, and an altar of 
hewn stones was forbidden. With the advent of 
the cut cube, the temple became known as the House 
of the Hammer — its altar, always in the center, be- 
ing in the form of a cube and regarded as “an in- 
dex or emblem of Truth, ever true to itself.” * In- 
deed, the cube, as Plutarch points out in his essay 
On the Cessation of Oracles, “is palpably the proper 
emblem of rest, on account of the security and firm- 
ness of the superficies.”” He further tells us that the 
pyramid is an image of the triangular flame ascend- 
ing froma square altar; and since no one knows, his 
guess is as good as any. At any rate, Mercury, 
Apollo, Neptune, and Hercules were worshiped un- 
der the form of a square stone, while a large black 
stone was the emblem of Buddha among the Hin- 
doos, of Manah Theus-Ceres in Arabia, and of Odin 
in Scandinavia. Everyone knows of the Stone of 
Memnon in Egypt, which was said to speak at sun- 
rise — as, in truth, all stones spoke to man in the 
sunrise of time.* 

More eloquent, if possible, was the Pillar uplifted, 
like the pillars of the gods upholding the heavens. 
Whatever may have been the origin of pillars, and 

1 Exod. 20:25. 


2 Antiquities of Cornwall, Borlase. 

3 Tost Language of Symbolism, Bayley, chap. xviii; also in 
the Bible, Deut. 32:18, Il Sam. 22:3, 32, Psa.28:1, Matt, 16:18, I 
Cor. 10:4. 


THE WORKING TOOLS 29 


there is more than one theory, Evans has shown 
that they were everywhere worshiped as gods.’ 
Indeed, the gods themselves were pillars of Light 
and Power, as in Egypt Horus and Sut were the 
twin-builders and supporters of heaven; and Bac- 
chus among the Thebans. At the entrance of the 
temple of Amenta, at the door of the house of Ptah 
—as, later, in the porch of the temple of Solo- 
mon — stood two pillars. Still further back, in the 
old solar myths, at the gateway of eternity stood 
two pillars — Strength and Wisdom. In India, and 
; among the Mayas and Incas, there were three pil- 
\\ars at the portals of the earthly and skyey temple 
— Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty. When man set 
up a pillar, he became a fellow-worker with Him 
whom the old sages of China used to call “the first 
Builder.” Also, pillars were set up to mark the holy 
places of vision and Divine deliverance, as when 
Jacob erected a pillar at Bethel, Joshua at Gilgal, 
and Samuel at Mizpeh and Shen. Always they were 
symbols of stability, of what the Egyptians describ- 
ed as “the place of establishing forever,” — em- 
blems of the faith “that the pillars of the earth are 
the Lord’s, and He hath set the world upon them.” * 
Long before our era we find the working tools of 
the Mason used as emblems of the very truths which 
they teach today. In the oldest classic of China, 


1 Tree and Pillar Cult, Sir Arthur Evans. 
mesa 2:8, Psa. /5:0,. JOD. 2017, REVe a 12. 


30 THE BUILDERS 


The Book of History, dating back to the twentieth 
century before Christ, we read the instruction: “Ye 
officers of the Government, apply the compasses.”’ 
Even if we begin where The Book of History ends, 
~ we find many such allusions more than seven hun- 
dred years before the Christian era. For example, 
in the famous canonical work, called The Great 
Learning, which has been referred to the fifth cen- 
/ tury B. C., we read, that a man should abstain from 
) doing unto others what he would not they should 
- do to him; “and this,” the writer adds, “‘is called 
the principle of acting on the square.” So also Con- 
fucius and his great follower, Mencius. In the writ- 
ings of Mencius it is taught that men should apply 
the square and compasses morally to their lives, and 
the level and the marking line besides, if they would 
walk in the straight and even paths of wisdom, and 
keep themselves within the bounds of honor and vir- 
tue." In the sixth book of his philosophy we find 
these words: 


A Master Mason, in teaching apprentices, makes use 
of the compasses and the square. Ye who are engaged 
in the pursuit of wisdom must also make use of the com- 
pass and square.” 


There are even evidences, in the earliest historic 


1 Freemasonry in China, Giles. Also Gould, His. Masonry, vol. 
Mire ette nee b 
2 Chinese Classics, by Legge, i, 219-45. 


THE WORKING TOOLS 31 


records of China, of the existence of a system of 
faith expressed in allegoric form, and illustrated by 
the symbols of building. The secrets of this faith 
seem to have been orally transmitted, the leaders 
alone pretending to have full knowledge of them. 
Oddly enough, it seems to have gathered about a 
symbolical temple put up in the desert, that the va- 
rious officers of the faith were distinguished by sym- 
bolic jewels, and that at its rites they wore leather 
aprons.” From such records as we have it is not 
possible to say whether the builders themselves used 
their tools as emblems, or whether it was the think- 
ers who first used them to teach moral truths. In 
any case, they were understood; and the point here 
is that, thus early, the tools of the builder were 
teachers of wise and good and beautiful truth. In- 
deed, we need not go outside the Bible to find both 
the materials and working tools of the Mason so 


employed: * 
For every house is builded by some man; but the build- 
er of all things is God . . . whose house we are.® 


1 Essay by Chaloner Alabaster, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, vol. ii, 
121-24. It is not too much to say that the Transactions of this 
Lodge of Research are the richest storehouse of Masonic lore in 
the world. 

2 Matt. 16:18, Eph. 2:20-22, I Cor. 2:9-17. Woman is the house 
and wall of man, without whose bounding and redeeming influence 
he would be dissipated and lost (Song of Solomon 8:10). So also 
by the mystics (The Perfect Way). 

3 Heb. 3:4. 


32 


THE BUILDERS 


Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a tried stone, a 
precious corner-stone, a sure foundation.’ 

The stone which the builders rejected is become the 
head of the corner.’ 

Ye also, as living stones, are built up into a spiritual 
house. 

When he established the heavens I was there, when he 
set the compass upon the face of the deep, when he marked 
out the foundations of the earth: then was I by him as a 
master workman.* 

The Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with 
a plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said unto me, 
Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then 
said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst 
of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any 
more.® 

Ye shall offer the holy oblation foursquare, with the 
possession of the city.® 

And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large 
as the breadth.’ 

Him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the temple 
of my God; and I will write upon him my new name.® 

For we know that when our earthly house of this tab- 
ernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, an house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.® 
1 Isa. 28:16. 

SPsayell8s22/ Matt 2142: 
Setar. 

4 Prov. 8:27-30, Revised Version. 
5 Amos 7:7, 8. 

6 Ezk. 48 :20. 

7 Rev. 21:16. 


8 Rev. 3:12. 
PUM LOK) ole betied 


THE WORKING TOOLS 33 


If further proof were needed, it has been pre- 
served for us in the imperishable stones of Egypt.’ 
The famous obelisk, known as Cleopatra’s Needle, 
now in Central Park, New York, the gift to our na- 
tion from Ismail, Khedive of Egypt in 1878, is a 
mute but eloquent witness of the antiquity of the 
simple symbols of the Mason. Originally it stood 
as one of the forest of obelisks surrounding the 
great temple of the Sun-god at Heliopolis, so long 
a seat of Egyptian learning and religion, dating 
back, it is thought, to the fifteenth century before 
Christ. It was removed to Alexandria and re-erect- 
ed by a Roman architect and engineer named Pon- 
tius, B. C. 22. When it was taken down in 1879 to 
be brought to America, all the emblems of the build- 
ers were found in the foundation. The rough Cube 
and the polished Cube in pure white limestone, the 
Square cut in syenite, an iron Trowel, a lead Plum- 
met, the arc of a Circle, the serpent-symbols of Wis- 
dom, a stone Trestle-board, a stone bearing the 
Master’s Mark, and a hieroglyphic word meaning 
Temple —all so placed and preserved as to show, 
beyond doubt, that they had high symbolic meaning. 


1Egyptian Obelisks, H. H. Gorringe. The obelisk in Central 
Park, the expenses for removing which were paid by W. H. Van- 
derbilt, was examined by the Grand Lodge of New York, and its 
emblems pronounced to be unmistakably Masonic. This book gives 
full account of all obelisks brought to Europe from Egypt, their 
measurements, inscriptions, and transportation. 


34 THE BUILDERS 


Whether they were in the original foundation, or 
were placed there when the obelisk was removed, 

no one can tell. Nevertheless, they were there, con-», 
crete witnesses of the fact that the builders worked )y 
in the light of a mystical faith, of which they were / 
emblems. 

Much has been written of buildings, their origin, 
age, and architecture, but of the builders hardly a 
word — so quickly is the worker forgotten, save as 
he lives in his work. Though we have no records 
other than these emblems, it is an obvious inference 
that there were orders of builders even in those 
early ages, to whom these symbols were sacred; and 
this inference is the more plausible when we remem- 
ber the importance of the builder both to religion 
and the state. What though the builders have fallen 
into dust, to which all things mortal decline, they 
still hold out their symbols for us to read, speaking 
their thoughts in a language easy to understand. 
Across the piled-up debris of ages they whisper the 
old familiar truths, and it will be a part of this study 
to trace those symbols through the centuries, show- 
ing that they have always had the same high mean- 
ings. They bear witness not only to the unity of 
the human mind, but to the existence of a common 
system of truth veiled in allegory and taught in sym- 
bols. As such, they are prophecies of Masonry as 


THE WORKING TOOLS 35 


we know it, whose genius it is to take what is old, ,, 


simple, and universal, and use it to bring men to-\ 
gether and make them friends. 


Shore calls to shore 
That the line is unbroken! 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH | 


And so the Quest goes on. And the Quest, as 
it may be, ends in attainment—we know not 
where and when: so long as we can conceive of 
our separate existence, the quest goes on—an 


attainment continued henceforward. And ever - 


shall the study of the ways which have been fol- 
lowed by those who have passed in front be a 
help on our own path, 

It is well, it is of all things beautiful and per- 
fect, holy and,high of all, to be conscious of the 
path which does in fine lead thither where we 
seek to go, namely, the goal which is in God. 
Taking nothing with us which does not belong 
to ourselves, leaving nothing behind us that is of 
our real selves, we shall find in the great attain- 
ment that the companions of our toil are with 
us. And the place is the Valley of Peace. 

— ARTHUR Epwarp WalIrTE, [he Secret Tradition 


bi 


CHAPTER III 


The Drama of Faith 


AN does not live by bread alone; he lives by», | | 


Faith, Hope, and Love, and the first of these 
was Faith. Nothing in the human story is more 
striking than the persistent, passionate, profound 
protest of man against death. Even in the earliest 
time we see him daring to stand erect at the gates 
of the grave, disputing its verdict, refusing to let 
it have the last word, and making argument in be- 
half of his soul. For Emerson, as for Addison, that 
fact alone was proof enough of immortality, as re- 
vealing a universal intuition of eternal life. Others 
may not be so easily convinced, but no man who has 
the heart of a man can fail to be impressed by the 
ancient, heroic faith of his race. 

Nowhere has this faith ever been more vivid or 
victorious than among the old Egyptians.* In the 


1Of course, faith in immortality was in nowise peculiar to 
Egypt, but was universal; as vivid in The Upanishads of India as 
in the Pyramid records. It rests upon the consensus of the insight, 
experience, and aspiration of the race. But the records of Egypt, 
like its monuments, are richer than those of other nations, if not 


40 THE BUILDERS 


ancient Book of the Dead — which 1s, indeed, a 
Book of Resurrection —occur the words: “The, \\v 
soul to heaven; the body to earth;” and that first | 
faith is our faith today. Of King Unas, who lived / 
in the third millennium, it is written: ‘Behold, 
thou hast not gone as one dead, but as one living.” 
Nor has any one in our day set forth this faith with 
more simple eloquence than the Hymn to Osiris, in 
, the Papyrus of Hunefer. So in the Pyramid Texts 
, ,the dead are spoken of as Those Who Ascend, the 
_/ Impérishable Ones who shine as stars, and the gods 
are invoked to witness the death of the King 
“Dawning as a Soul.” ‘There is deep prophecy, al- 
beit touched with poignant pathos, in these broken 
exclamations written on the pyramid walls: 

Thou diest not! Have ye said that he would die? He 
diest not; this King Pepi lives forever! Live! ‘Thou 
shalt not die! He has escaped his day of death! Thou 
livest, thou livest, raise thee up! Thou diest not, stand 


up, raise thee up! Thou perishest not eternally! Thou 
diest not! + 


older. Moreover, the drama of faith with which we have to do here 
had its origin in Egypt, whence it spread to Tyre, Athens, and 
Rome — and, as we shall see, even to England. For brief exposi- 
tions of Egyptian faith see Egyptian Conceptions of Immortality, 
by G. A. Reisner, and Religion and Thought in Egypt, by J. H. 
Breasted. 

1 Pyramid Texts, 775, 1262, 1453, 1477. 


a ee sea aco 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH At 


Nevertheless, nor poetry nor chant nor solemn 
ritual could make death other than death; and the 
Pyramid Texts, while refusing to utter the fatal 
word, give wistful reminiscences of that blessed 
age “before death came forth.” However high the 
faith of man, the masterful negation and collapse 
of the body was a fact, and it was to keep that dar--' 
ing faith alive and aglow that The Mysteries were 
instituted. Beginning, it may be, in incantation, 
they rose to heights of influence and beauty, giving 
dramatic portrayal of the unconquerable faith of 
man. Watching the sun rise from the tomb of night, 
and the spring return in glory after the death of 
winter, man reasoned from analogy — justifying a 
faith that held him as truly as he held it — that the 
race, sinking into the grave, would rise triumphant 
over death. 


I 


There were many variations on this theme as the 
drama of faith evolved, and as it passed from land 
to land; but the Motif was ever the same, and they 
all were derived, directly or indirectly, from the old 
Osirian passion-play in Egypt. Against the back- 
ground of the ancient Solar religion, Osiris made his 
advent as Lord of the Nile and fecund Spirit of 


42 THE BUILDERS 


vegetable life —son of Nut the sky-goddess and 
Geb the earth-god; and nothing in the story of the 
Nile-dwellers is more appealing than his conquest 
of the hearts of the people against all odds.* How- 
beit, that history need not detain us here, except to 
say that by the time his passion had become the 
drama of national faith, it had been bathed in all 
the tender hues of human life; though somewhat 
of its solar radiance still lingered in it. Enough to 
say that of all the gods, called into being by the 
hopes and fears of men who dwelt in times of yore 
on the banks of the Nile, Osiris was the most be- 
loved. Osiris the benign father, Isis his sorrowful 
and faithful wife, and Horus whose filial piety and 
heroism shine like diamonds in a heap of stones — 
about this trinity were woven the ideals of Egyptian 
faith and family life. Hear now the story of the 
oldest drama of the race, which for more than three 
thousand years held captive the hearts of men.’ 


1For a full account of the evolution of the Osirian theology 
from the time it emerged from the mists of myth until its con- 
quest, see Religion and Thought in Egypt, by Breasted, the latest, 
if not the most brilliant, book written in the light of the completest 
translation of the Pyramid Texts (especially lecture v). 

2 Much has been written about the Egyptian Mysteries from the 
days of Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride and the Metamorphoses of 
Apuleius to the huge volumes of Baron Sainte Croix. For popular 
reading the Kings and Gods of Egypt, by Moret (chaps. iii-iv), and 
the delightfully vivid Hermes and Plato, by Schure, could hardly 
be surpassed. But Plutarch and Apuleius, both initiates, are our 
best authorities, even if their oath of silence prevents them from 
telling us what we most want to know. 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH 43 


Osiris was Ruler of Eternity, but by reason of his 
visible shape seemed nearly akin to man — reveal- 
ing a divine humanity. His success was chiefly 
due, however, to the gracious speech of Isis, his sis- 
ter-wife, whose charm men could neither reckon 
nor resist. ‘Together they labored for the good of 
man, teaching him to discern the plants fit for food, 
themselves pressing the grapes and drinking the 
first cup of wine. They made known the veins of 
metal running through the earth, of which man was 
ignorant, and taught him to make weapons. They 
initiated man into the intellectual and moral life, 
taught him ethics and religion, how to read the 
starry sky, song and dance and the rhythm of music. 
Above all, they evoked in men a sense of immortal- 
ity, of a destiny beyond the tomb. Nevertheless, 
they had enemies at once stupid and cunning, keen- 
witted but short-sighted — the dark force of evil 
which still weaves the fringe of crime on the bor- 
ders of human life. 

Side by side with Osiris, lived the impious Set- 
Typhon, as Evil ever haunts the Good. While Osi- 
ris was absent, Typhon — whose name means ser- 
pent — filled with envy and malice, sought to usurp 
his throne; but his plot was frustrated by Isis. 
Whereupon he resolved to kill Osiris. This he 
did, having invited him to a feast, by persuading 
him to enter a chest, offering, as if in jest, to pre- 
sent the richly carved chest to any one of his guests 


44 THE BUILDERS 


who, lying down inside it, found he was of the same 
size. When Osiris got in and stretched himself 
out, the conspirators closed the chest, and flung it 
into the Nile.* Thus far, the gods had not known 
death. They had grown old, with white hair and 
trembling limbs, but old age had not led to death. 
As soon as Isis heard of this infernal treachery, she 
cut her hair, clad herself in a garb of mourning, 
ran thither and yon, a prey to the most cruel an- 
guish, seeking the body. Weeping and distracted, 
she never tarried, never tired in her sorrowful 
quest. 

Meanwhile, the waters carried the chest out to 
sea, as far as Byblos in Syria, the town of Adonis, 
where it lodged against a shrub of arica, or tama- 
risk — like an acacia tree.” Owing to the virtue of 


1 Among the Hindoos, whose Chrisna is the same as the Osiris 
of Egypt, the gods of summer were beneficent, making the days 
fruitful. But “the three wretches” who presided over winter, were 
cut off from the zodiac; and as they were “found missing,” they 
were accused of the death of Chrisna. 

2A literary parallel in the story of Aineas, by Vergil, is most 
suggestive. Priam, king of Troy, in the beginning of the Trojan 
war committed his son Polydorus to the care of Polymester, king 
of Thrace, and sent him a great sum of money. After Troy was 
taken the Thracian, for the sake of the money, killed the young 
prince and privately buried him. /Aneas, coming into that country, 
and accidentally plucking up a shrub that was near him on the side 
of the hill, discovered the murdered body of Polydorus. Other 
legends of such accidental discoveries of unknown graves haunted 
the olden time, and may have been suggested by the story of Isis. 


OO  e 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH 4s 


the body, the shrub, at its touch, shot up into a tree, 
growing around it, and protecting it, until the king 
of that country cut the tree which hid the chest in 
its bosom, and made from it a column for his pal- 
ace. At last Isis, led by a vision, came to Byblos, 
made herself known, and asked for the column. 
Hence the picture of her weeping over a broken 
column torn from the palace, while Horus, god of 
Time, stands behind her pouring ambrosia on her 
hair. She took the body back to Egypt, to the city 
of Bouto; but Typhon, hunting by moonlight, found 
the chest, and having recognized the body of Osiris, 
mangled it and scattered it beyond recognition. 
Isis, embodiment of the old world-sorrow for the 
dead, continued her pathetic quest, gathering piece 
by piece the body of her dismembered husband, and 
giving him decent interment. Such was the life 
and death of Osiris, but as his career pictured the 
cycle of nature, it could not of course end here. 
Horus fought with Typhon, losing an eye in the 
battle, but finally overthrew him and took him pris- 
oner. ‘There are several versions of his fate, but 
he seems to have been tried, sentenced, and execut- 
ed — “cut in three pieces,” as the Pyramid Texts 
relate. Thereupon the faithful son went in solemn 
procession to the grave of his father, opened it, and 
called upon Osiris to rise: “Stand up! Thou shalt 


46 THE BUILDERS 


not end, thou shalt not perish!’ But death was» 


deaf. Here the Pyramid Texts recite the mortuary 
ritual, with its hymns and chants; but in vain. At 
length Osiris awakes, weary and feeble, and by the 
aid of the strong grip of the lion-god he gains con- 
trol of his body, and is lifted from death to life.* 
Thereafter, by virtue of his victory over death, Osi- 
ris becomes Lord of the Land of Death, his scepter 
an Ank Cross, his throne a Square. 


II 


Such, in brief, was the ancient allegory of eternal 
life, upon which there were many elaborations as 
the drama unfolded; but always, under whatever 
variation of local color, of national accent or em- 
phasis, its central theme remained the same. Often 
perverted and abused, it was everywhere a dramatic 
expression of the great human aspiration for tri- 
umph over death and union with God, and the be- 
lief in the ultimate victory of Good over Evil. Not 
otherwise would this drama have held the hearts of 
men through long ages, and won the eulogiums of 
the most enlightened men of antiquity — of Pythag- 
oras, Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Plutarch, Pindar, 
Isocrates, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Writ- 
ing to his wife after the loss of their little girl, 


1The Gods of the Egyptians, by E. A. W. Budge; La Place des 
Victores, by Austin Fryar, especially the colored plates. 


ee 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH 47 


Plutarch commends to her the hope set forth in the 
mystic rites and symbols of this drama, as, else- 
where, he testifies that it kept him “as far from 
superstition as from atheism,” and helped him to 
approach the truth. For deeper minds this drama 
had a double meaning, teaching not only immor- 
tality after death, but the awakening of man upon 
earth from animalism to a life of purity, justice, 
and honor. How nobly this practical aspect was 
taught, and with what fineness of spiritual insight, 
may be seen in Secret Sermon on the Mountain in 
the Hermetic lore of Greece: * 

What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. 
Whenever I see within myself the Simple Vision brought 
to birth out of God’s mercy, I have passed through my- 
self into a Body that can never die. Then I am not what 
I was before. . . They who are thus born are children 
of a Divine race. ‘This race, my son, is never taught; but 
when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God. It is 
the “Way of Birth in God.” . . Withdraw into thyself 
and it will come. Wé4ill, and it comes to pass. 


Isis herself is said to have established the first 
temple of the Mysteries, the oldest being those prac- 
ticed at Memphis. Of these there were two orders, 
the Lesser to which the many were eligible, and 
which consisted of dialogue and ritual, with certain 
signs, tokens, grips, passwords; and the Greater, 

1 Quests New and Old, by G. R. S. Mead. 


48 THE BUILDERS 


reserved for the few who approved themselves 
worthy of being entrusted with the highest secrets 
of science, philosophy, and religion. For these the 
candidate had to undergo trial, purification, danger, 
austere asceticism, and, at last, regeneration 
through dramatic death amid rejoicing. Such as 
endured the ordeal with valor were then taught, 
orally and by symbol, the highest wisdom to which 
man had attained, including geometry, astronomy, 
the fine arts, the laws of nature, as well as the truths 
of faith. Awful oaths of secrecy were exacted, and 
Plutarch describes a man kneeling, his hands bound, 
a cord round his body, and a knife at his throat — 
death being the penalty of violating the obligation. 
Even then, Pythagoras had to wait almost twenty 
years to learn the hidden wisdom of Egypt, so cau- 
tious were they of candidates, especially of foreign- 
ers. But he made noble use of it when, later, he 
founded a secret order of his own at Crotona, in 
Greece, in which, among other things, he taught 
geometry, using numbers as symbols of spiritual 
truth." 

From Egypt the Mysteries passed with little 
change to Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, the 


1 Pythagoras, by Edouard Schure—a fascinating story of that 
great thinker and teacher. The use of numbers by Pythagoras 
must not, however, be confounded with the mystical, or rather fan- 
tastic, mathematics of the Kabbalists of a later time. 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH 49 


names of local gods being substituted for those of 
Osiris and Isis. The Grecian or Eleusinian Mys- 
teries, established 1800 B. C., represented Demeter 
and Persephone, and depicted the death of Diony- 
sius with stately ritual which led the neophyte from 
death into life and immortality. They taught the 
unity of God, the immutable necessity of morality, 
and a life after death, investing initiates with signs 
and passwords by which they could know each 
other in the dark as well as in the light. The 
Mithraic or Persian Mysteries celebrated the eclipse 
of the Sun-ged, using the signs of the zodiac, the 
processions of the seasons, the death of nature, and 
the birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults 
were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to 
point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mys- 
teries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun 
was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the 
vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also, the 
Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God 
the tragedy of winter and summer, and conducted 
the initiate through the valley of death to life ever- 
lasting.” 

1For a vivid account of the spread of the Mysteries of Isis and 
Mithra over the Roman Empire, see Roman Life from Nero to 
Aurelius, by Dill (bk. iv, chaps. v-vi). Franz Cumont is the great 


authority on Mithra, and his Mysteries of Mithra and Oriental Re- 
ligions trace the origin and influence of that cult with accuracy, in- 


50 | THE BUILDERS 


Shortly before the Christian era, when faith was 
failing and the world seemed reeling to its ruin, 
there was a great revival of the Mystery-religions. 
Imperial edict was powerless to stay it, much less 
stop it. From Egypt, from the far East, they came 
rushing in like a tide, Isis “of the myriad names” 
vieing with Mithra, the patron saint of the soldier, 
for the homage of the multitude. If we ask the 
secret reason for this influx of mysticism, no single 
answer can be given to the question. What influ- 
ence the reigning mystery-cults had upon the new, 
uprising Christianity is also hard to know, and the 
issue is still in debate. That they did influence the 
early Church is evident from the writings of the 
Fathers, and some go so far as to say that the Mys- 
teries died at last only to live again in the ritual of 
the Church. St. Paul in his missionary journeys 
came in contact with the Mysteries, and even makes 
use of some of their technical terms in his epistles; * 
but he condemned them on the ground that what 


sight, and charm. W. W. Reade, brother of Charles Reade the 
novelist, left a study of The Veil of Isis, or Mysteries of the 
Druids, finding in the vestiges of Druidism “the Emblems of Ma- 
sonry.” 

1 Col. 2:8-19. See Mysteries Pagan and Christian, by C. Chee- 
than; also Monumental Christianity, by Lundy, especially chapter 
on “The Discipline of the Secret.” For a full discussion of the atti- 
tude of St. Paul, see St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions, by Ken- 
nedy, a work of fine scholarship. That Christianity had its esoteric 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH SI 


they sought to teach in drama can be known only 
by spiritual experience —a sound insight, though 
surely drama may assist to that experience, else 
public worship might also come under ban. 


Ill 


Toward the end of their power, the Mysteries 
fell into the mire and became corrupt, as all things 
human are apt to do: even the Church itself being 
no exception. But that at their highest and best 
they were not only lofty and noble, but elevating 
and refining, there can be no doubt, and that they 
served a high purpose is equally clear. No one, 
who has read in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius 
the initiation of Lucius into the Mysteries of Isis, 
can doubt that the effect on the votary was pro- 
found and purifying. He tells us that the cere- 
mony of initiation “is, as it were, to suffer death,” 
and that he stood in the presence of the gods, “ay, 


is plain — as. it was natural — from the writings of the Fathers, in- 
cluding Origen, Cyril, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and 
others. Chrysostom often uses the word initiation in respect of 
Christian teaching, while Tertullian denounces the pagan mysteries 
as counterfeit imitations by Satan of the Christian secret rites and 
teachings: “He also baptises those who believe in him, and prom- 
ises that they shall come forth, cleansed of their sins.” Other 
Christian writers were more tolerant, finding in Christ the answer 
to the aspiration uttered in the Mysteries; and therein, it may be, 
they were right. 


52 THE BUILDERS 


stood near and worshiped.” Far hence ye profane, 
and all who are polluted by sin, was the motto of 
the Mysteries, and Cicero testifies that what a man 
learned in the house of the hidden place made him 
want to live nobly, and gave him happy hopes for 
the hour of death. 

Indeed, the Mysteries, as Plato said,* were estab- 
lished by men of great genius who, in the early ages, 
strove to teach purity, to ameliorate the cruelty of 
the race, to refine its manners and morals, and to 
restrain society by stronger bonds than those which 
human laws impose. No mystery any longer at- 
taches to what they taught, but only as to the par- 
ticular rites, dramas, and symbols used in their 
teaching. They taught faith in the unity and spir- 
ituality of God, the sovereign authority of the moral 
law, heroic purity of soul, austere discipline of char- 
acter, and the hope of a life beyond the tomb. ‘Thus 
in ages of darkness, of complexity, of conflicting 
peoples, tongues, and faiths, these great orders 
toiled in behalf of friendship, bringing men together 
under a banner of faith, and training them for a 
nobler moral life. Tender and tolerant of all faiths, 
they formed an all-embracing moral and spiritual 
fellowship which rose above barriers of nation, 
race, and creed, satisfying the craving of men for 

1 Phaedo. 


THE DRAMA OF FAITH 53 


unity, while evoking in them a sense of that eternal 
mysticism out of which all religions were born. 
Their ceremonies, so far as we know them, were 
stately dramas of the moral life and the fate of the 
soul. Mystery and secrecy added impressiveness, 
and fable and enigma disguised in imposing spec- 
tacle the laws of justice, piety, and the hope of im- 
mortality. 

Masonry stands in this tradition; and if we may 
not say that it is historically related to the great 
ancient orders, it is their spiritual descendant, and 
renders much the same ministry to our age which 
the Mysteries rendered to the olden world. It is, 
indeed, the same stream of sweetness and light 
flowing in our day — like the fabled river Alpheus 
which, gathering the waters of a hundred rills along 
the hillsides of Arcadia, sank, lost to sight, in a 
chasm in the earth, only to reappear in the fountain 
of Arethusa. This at least is true: the Greater An- 
cient Mysteries were prophetic of Masonry whose 
drama is an epitome of universal initiation, and 
whose simple symbols are the depositaries of the 
noblest wisdom of mankind. As such, it brings men 
together at the altar of prayer, keeps alive the 
truths that make us men, seeking, by every resource 
of art, to make tangible the power of love, the worth 
of beauty, and the reality of the ideal. 


‘a 


The value of man does not consist in the truth 
which he possesses, or means to possess, but in 
the sincere pain which he hath taken to find it 
out. For his powers do not augment by possess- 
ing truth, but by investigating it, wherein consists 
his only perfectibility. Possession lulls the en- 
ergy of man, and makes him idle and proud. 
If God held inclosed in his right hand absolute 
truth, and in his left only the inward lively wm- 
pulse toward truth, and if He said to me: 
Choose! even at the risk of exposing mankind to 
continual erring, I most humbly would seize 
Hus left hand, and say: Father, give! absolute 
truth belongs to Thee alone. 

G. E. Lessinc, Nathan the Wise 


CHAPTER IV 


The Secret Doctrine 


I 


OD ever shields us from premature ideas, said 
the gracious and wise Emerson; and so does 
nature. She holds back her secrets until man is fit 
to be entrusted with them, lest by rashness he de- 
stroy himself. Those who seek find, not because 
the truth is far off, but because the discipline of the 
quest makes them ready for the truth, and worthy 
to receive it. By a certain sure instinct the great 
teachers of our race have regarded the highest truth 
less as a gift bestowed than as a trophy to be won. 
Everything must not be told to everybody. Truth 
is power, and when held by untrue hands it may be- 
come a plague. Even Jesus had His “little flock” 
to whom He confided much which He kept from 
the world, or else taught it in parables cryptic and 
veiled.» One of His sayings in explanation of His 
method is quoted by Clement of Alexandria in his 
Homilies: 
1 Matt. 13:10, 11. 


58 THE BUILDERS 


It was not from grudgingness that our Lord gave the 
charge in a certain Gospel: “My mystery is for Me and 
the sons of My house.’ ? 

This more withdrawn teaching, hinted in the say- 
ing of the Master, with the arts of spiritual culture 
employed, has come to be known as the Secret Doc- 
trine, or the Hidden Wisdom. A persistent tradi- 
tion affirms that throughout the ages, and in every 
land, behind the system of faith accepted by the 
masses an inner and deeper doctrine has been held 
and taught by those able to grasp it. This hidden 
faith has undergone many changes of outward ex- 
pression, using now one set of symbols and now 
another, but its central tenets have remained the 
same; and necessarily so, since the ultimates of 
thought are ever immutable. By the same token, 
those who have eyes to see have no difficulty in pen- 
etrating the varying veils of expression and identi- 
fying the underlying truths; thus confirming in the 
arcana of faith what we found to be true in its 
earliest forms—the oneness of the human mind 
and the unity of truth. 

There are those who resent the suggestion that 
there is, or can be, secrecy in regard to spiritual 
truths which, if momentous at all, are of common 
moment to all. For this reason Demonax, in the 
Lucian play, would not be initiated, because, if the 

1 Unwritten Sayings of Our Lord, David Smith, vii. 


THE SECRET DOCTRINE 59 


Mysteries were bad, he would not keep silent as a 
warning; and if they were good, he would proclaim 
them as a duty. The objection is, however, un- 
sound, as a little thought will reveal. Secrecy in 
such matters inheres in the nature of the truths 
themselves, not in any affected superiority of a few 
elect minds. Qualification for the knowledge of 
higher things is, and must always be, a matter of 
personal fitness. Other qualification there is none. 
For those who have that fitness the Secret Doctrine 
is as clear as sunlight, and for those who have it 
not the truth would still be secret though shouted 
from the house-top. The Grecian Mysteries were 
certainly secret, yet the fact of their existence was 
a matter of common knowledge, and there was no 
more secrecy about their sanctuaries than there is 
about a cathedral. Their presence testified to the 
public that a deeper than the popular faith did ex- 
ist, but the right to admission into them depended 
upon the whole-hearted wish of the aspirant, and 
his willingness to fit himself to know the truth. 
The old maxim applies here, that when the pupil is 
ready the teacher is found waiting, and he passes 
on to know a truth hitherto hidden because he 
lacked either the aptitude or the desire. 

All is mystery as of course, but mystification is 
another thing, and the tendency to befog a theme 
which needs to be clarified, is to be regretted. Here 


60 THE BUILDERS 


lies, perhaps, the real reason for the feeling of re- 
sentment against the idea of a Secret Doctrine, and 
one must admit that it is not without justification. 
For example, we are told that behind the age-long 
struggle of man to know the truth there exists a 
hidden fraternity of initiates, adepts in esoteric lore, 
known to themselves but not to the world, who have 
had in their keeping, through the centuries, the high 
truths which they permit to be dimly adumbrated 
in the popular faiths, but which the rest of the race 
are too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imper- 
fect and limited degree. These hidden sages, it 
would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity 
much like the patient masters of an idiot school, 
watching it go on forever seeking without finding, 
while they sit in seclusion keeping the keys of the 
occult." All of which would be very wonderful, if 
true. It is, however, only one more of those fascin- 
ating fictions with which mystery-mongers enter- 
tain themselves, and deceive others. Small wonder 


1 By occultism is meant the belief in, and the claim to be able 
to use, a certain range of forces neither natural, nor, technically, 
supernatural, but more properly to be called preternatural — often, 
though by no means ‘always, for evil or selfish ends. Some extend 
the term occultism to cover mysticism and the spiritual life gener- 
ally, but that is not a legitimate use of either word. Occultism 
seeks to get; mysticism to give. The one is audacious and seclusive, 
the other humble and open; and if we are not to end in blunderland 
we must not confound the two (Mysticism, by E. Underhill, part i, 
chap. vil). 


THE SECRET DOCTRINE 61 


that thinking men turn from such fanciful folly 
with mingled feelings of pity and disgust. Sages 
there have been in every land and time, and their 
lofty wisdom has the unity which inheres in all high 
human thought, but that there is now, or has ever 
been, a conscious, much less a continuous, fellow- 
ship of superior souls holding as secrets truths 
denied to their fellow-men, verges upon the absurd. 

Indeed, what is called the Secret Doctrine differs 
not one whit from what has been taught openly and 
earnestly, so far as such truth can be taught in 
words or pictured in symbols, by the highest minds 
of almost every land and language. ‘The difference 
lies less in what is taught than in the way in which 
it is taught; not so much in matter as in method. 
Also, we must not forget that, with few exceptions, 
the men who have led our race farthest along the 
way toward the Mount of Vision, have not been 
men who learned their lore from any coterie of 
esoteric experts, but, rather, men who told in song 
what they had been taught in sorrow — initiates 
into eternal truth, to be sure, but by the grace of 
God and the divine right of genius!* Seers, sages, 


1 Much time would have been saved, and not a little confusion 
avoided, had this obvious fact been kept in mind. Even so charm- 
ing a book as Jesus, the Last Great Initiate, by Schure—not to 
speak of The Great Work and Mystic Masonry —is clearly, though 
not intentionally, misleading. Of a piece with this is the effort, 
apparently deliberate and concerted, to rob the Hebrew race of all 


62 THE BUILDERS 


mystics, saints— these are they who, having 
sought in sincerity, found in reality, and the mem- 
ory of them is a kind of religion. Some of them, 
like Pythagoras, were trained for their quest in the 
schools of the Secret Doctrine, but others went their 
way alone, though never unattended, and, led by 
“the vision splendid,” they came at last to the gate 
and passed into the City. 

Why, then, it may be asked, speak of such a thing 
as the Secret Doctrine at all, since it were better 
named the Open Secret of the world? For two rea- 
sons, both of which have been intimated: first, in 
the olden times unwonted knowledge of any kind 
was a very dangerous possession, and the truths of 
science and philosophy, equally with religious ideas 
other than those in vogue among the multitude, had 
to seek the protection of obscurity. If this neces- 
sity gave designing priestcraft its opportunity, it 
nevertheless offered the security and silence need- 
ed by the thinker and seeker after truth in dark 


spiritual originality, as witness so able a work as Our Own Re- 
ligion in Persia, by Mills, to name no other. Our own religion? 
Assuredly, if by that is meant the one great, universal religion of 
humanity. But the sundering difference between the Bible and any 
other book that speaks to mankind about God and Life and Death, 
sets the Hebrew race apart as supreme in its religious genius, as the 
Greeks were in philosophical acumen and artistic power, and the 
Romans in executive skill. Leaving all theories of inspiration out 
of account, facts are facts, and the Bible has no peer in the lit- 
erature of mankind. 


THE SECRET DOCTRINE 63 


times. Hence there arose in the ancient world, 
wherever the human mind was alive and spiritual, 
systems of exoteric and esoteric instruction; that ts, 
of truth taught openly and truth concealed. Dis- 
ciples were advanced from the outside to the inside 
of this divine philosophy, as we have seen, by de- 
grees of initiation. Whereas, by symbols, dark say- 
ings, and dramatic ritual the novice received only 
hints of what was later made plain. 

Second, this hidden teaching may indeed be de- 
scribed as the open secret of the world, because it 
is open, yet understood only by those fit to receive 
it. What kept it hidden was no arbitrary restric- 
tion, but only a lack of insight and fineness of mind 
to appreciate and assimilate it. Nor could it be 
otherwise; and this is as true today as eyer it was 
in the days of the Mysteries, and so it will be until 
whatever is to be the end of mortal things. Fit- 
ness for the finer truths cannot be conferred; it 
must be developed. Without it the teachings of the 
sages are enigmas that seem unintelligible, if not 
contradictory. In so far, then, as the discipline of 
initiation, and its use of art in drama and symbol, 
help toward purity of soul and spiritual awakening, 
by so much do they prepare men for the truth; by 
so much and no further. So that, the Secret Doc- 
trine, whether as taught by the ancient Mysteries 
or by modern Masonry, is less a doctrine than a 


64 THE BUILDERS ¥ 


discipline; a method of organized spiritual culture, 
and as such has a place and a ministry among men. 


II 


Perhaps the greatest student in this field of 
esoteric teaching and method, certainly the greatest 
now living, is Arthur Edward Waite, to whom it 
is a pleasure to pay tribute. By nature a symbolist, 
if not a sacramentalist, he found in such studies a 
task for which he was almost ideally fitted by tem- 
perament, training, and genius. Engaged in busi- 
ness, but not absorbed by it, years of quiet, leisurely 
toil have made him master of the vast literature 
and lore of his subject, to the study of which he 
brought a religious nature, the accuracy and skill 
of a scholar, a sureness and delicacy of insight at 
once sympathetic and critical, the soul of a poet, and 
a patience as untiring as it is rewarding; qualities 
rare indeed, and still more rarely blended. Prolific 
but seldom prolix, he writes with grace, ease, and 
lucidity, albeit in a style often opulent, and touched 
at times with lights and jewels from old alchemists, 
antique liturgies, remote and haunting. romance, 
secret orders of initiation, and other recondite 
sources not easily traced. Much learning and 
many kinds of wisdom are in his pages, and withal 
an air of serenity, of tolerance; and if he is of those 


THE SECRET DOCTRINE 65 


who turn down another street when miracles are 
performed in the neighborhood, it is because, hav- 
ing found the inner truth, he asks for no sign. 

Always he writes in the conviction that all great 
subjects bring us back to the one subject which is 
alone great, and that scholarly criticisms, folk-lore, 
and deep philosophy are little less than useless if 
they fall short of directing us to our true end — the 
attainment of that living Truth which is about us 
everywhere. He conceives of our mortal life as 
one eternal Quest of that living Truth, taking many 
phases and forms, yet ever at heart the same as- 
piration, to trace which he has made it his labor and 
joy toessay. ‘Through all his pages he is following 
out the tradition of this Quest, in its myriad as- 
pects, especially since the Christian era, disfigured 
though it has been at times by superstition, and dis- 
torted at others by bigotry, but still, in what guise 
soever, containing as its secret the meaning of the 
life of man from his birth to his reunion with God 
who is his Goal. And the result is a series of vol- 
umes noble in form, united in aim, unique in wealth 
of revealing beauty, and of unequalled worth.’ 


1 Some there are who think that much of the best work of Mr. 
Waite is in his poetry, of which there are two volumes, 4A Book 
of Mystery and Vision, and Strange Houses of Sleep. There one 
meets a fine spirit, alive to the glory of the world and all that 
charms the soul and sense of man, yet seeing past these; rich and 


=, 


66 THE BUILDERS 


Beginning as far back as 1886, Waite issued his 
study of the Mysteries of Magic, a digest of the 
writings of Eliphas Levi, to whom Albert Pike was 
more indebted than he let us know. Then followed 
the Real History of the Rosicrucians, which traces, 
as far as any mortal may trace, the thread of fact 
whereon is strung the romance of a fraternity the 
very existence of which has been doubted and de- 
nied by turns. Like all his work, it bears the im- 
press of knowledge from the actual sources, betray- 
ing his extraordinary learning and his exceptional 
experience in this kind of inquiry. Of the Quest in 
its distinctively Christian aspect, he has written in 
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal; a work of 
rare beauty, of bewildering richness, written in a 
style which, partaking of the quality of the story 
told, is not at all after the manner of these days. 
But the Graal Legend is only one aspect of the old- 
world sacred Quest, uniting the symbols of chiv- 
alry with Christian faith. Masonry is another; and 
no one may ever hope to write of The Secret Tradi- 
tion in Masonry with more insight and charm, or 
a touch more sure and revealing, than this gracious 
student for whom Masonry perpetuates the insti- 


significant thought so closely wedded to emotion that each seems 
either. Other books not to be omitted are his slender volume of 
aphorisms, Steps to the Crown, his Life of Saint-Martin, and his 
Studies in Mysticism; for what he touches he adorns. 


THE SECRET DOCTRINE 67 


tuted Mysteries of antiquity, with much else derived 
from innumerable store-houses of treasure. His 
last work is a survey of The Secret Doctrine in 
Israel, being a study of the Zohar,’ or Hebrew 
“Book of Splendor,” a feat for which no Hebrew 
scholar has had the heart. This Bible of Kabbal- 
ism is indeed so confused and confusing that only a 
“golden dustman” would have had the patience to 
- sift out its gems from the mountain of dross, and 
attempt to reduce its wide-weltering chaos to order. 
Even Waite, with all his gift of research and nar- 
ration, finds little more than gleams of dawn in a 
dim forest, brilliant vapors, and glints that tell by 
their very perversity and strangeness. 

Whether this age-old legend of the Quest be 
woven about the Cup of Christ, a Lost Word, or a 
design left unfinished by the death of a Master 
Builder, it has always these thing's in common: first, 
the memorials of a great Joss which has befallen hu- 
manity by sin, making our race a pilgrim host ever 
in search; second, the intimation that what was lost 
still exists somewhere in time and the world, al- 


1Even the Jewish Encyclopedia, and such scholars as Zunz, 
Graetz, Luzzatto, Jost, and Munk avoid this jungle, as well they 
might, remembering the legend of the four sages in “the enclosed 
garden:” one of whom looked around and died; another lost his 
reason; a third tried to destroy the garden; and only one came out 
with his wits. See The Cabala, by Pick, and The Kabbalah Un- 


veiled, by MacGregor. 


68 THE BUILDERS 


though deeply buried; third, the faith that it will 
ultimately be found and the vanished glory re- 
stored; fourth, the substitution of something tem- 
porary and less than the best, albeit never in a way 
to adjourn the quest; fifth, and more rarely, the felt 
presence of that which was lost under veils close to 
the hands of.all. What though it take many forms, 
from the pathetic pilgrimage of the Wandering Jew 
to the journey to fairyland in quest of The Blue 
Bird, it is ever and always the same. ‘These are 
but so many symbols of the fact that men are made 
of one blood and born to one need; that they should 
seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, 
and find Him, though He is not far from every one 
of us; for in Him we live and move and have our 
being.” 

What, then, is the Secret Doctrine, of which this 
seer-like scholar has written with so many impro- 
visations of eloquence and emphasis, and of which 
each of us is in quest? What, indeed, but that 
which all the world is seeking — knowledge of Him 
whom to know aright is the fulfillment of every 
human need: the kinship of the soul with God; the 
life of purity, honor, and piety demanded by that 
high heredity; the unity and fellowship of the race 
in duty and destiny; and the faith that the soul is \ 

1 Acts 17 :26-28. 


? 


THE SECRET DOCTRINE 69 


_deathless as God its Father is deathless! Now to 


accept this faith as a mere philosophy is one thing, 
but to realize it as an experience of the innermost 
heart is another and a deeper thing. No man 
knows the Secret Doctrine until it has become the 
secret of Mus soul, the reigning reality of hts 
thought, the inspiration of his acts, the form and 
color and glory of lus life. Happily, owing to the 
growth of the race in spiritual intelligence and 
power, the highest truth is no longer held as a 
sacred secret. Still, if art has efficacy to surprise 
and reveal the elusive Spirit of Truth, when truth 
is dramatically presented it is made vivid and im- 
pressive, strengthening the faith of the strongest 
and bringing a ray of heavenly light to many a 
baffled seeker. 

Fiver the Quest goes on, though it is permitted 
some of us to believe that the Lost Word has been 
found, in the only way in which it can ever be 
found —even in the life of Him who was “the 
Word made flesh,” who dwelt among us and whose 
grace and beauty we know. Of this Quest Masonry .. 
is an aspect, continuing the high tradition of hu- 
manity, asking men to unite in the search for the 
thing most worth finding, that each may share the 
faith of all. Apart from its rites, there is no mys- 
tery in Masonry, save the mystery of all great and 


70 THE BUILDERS 


simple things. So far from being hidden or occult, 
its glory lies in its openness, and its emphasis upon 
the realities which are to the human world what 
light and air are to nature. Its mystery is of so 
great a kind that it is easily overlooked; its secret 
almost too simple to be found out. 


ite = Pa ey ho oe Gla a TO) OPUS a OS Ca aby, t i 
ae ave UPI Sy Ny, aaa Ce iE Le bi ; | 
f : The i 4 A f iW : f . 
i ¥ i Al ah EFA PT ds OST vt CON + } : 
Wa cy MUA MG heist rf Va: 
coeur mA ‘ an 
AC tena ay rh Med . , 
y ree pag ; a 
oa) mn ie Pre 
an ‘ . 4 ) 
‘ ‘ 
j y 7 
wt a 
pr can’ ‘ - ‘ . A 
4 
: : 
on F 
' 
4 i ’ 
' ; 
i* p sf 
‘ . 
“r 
’ 
* 
‘ 
. ‘ ‘ 
' 
’ 
‘ 
v 
é 
> 
\ 
‘ * + ‘ 
i - p 
‘ / 
; 
\ 
1 
‘ 
'’ ' 
, ‘ 
] } ' 
| 7 lA t i " \ ‘ 
if) 6 wy! . = +) Sere oe! 9 i » “1 ; 


This society was called the Dionysian Artif- 
icers, as Bacchus was supposed to be the in- 
ventor of building theaters; and they performed 
the Dionysian festivities. From this period, the 
Science of Astronomy which had given rise to 
the Dionysian rites, became connected with types 
taken from the art of building. The Ionian so- 
cieties . . . extended their moral views, in con- 
junction with the art of building, to many useful 
purposes, and to the practice of acts of benevo- 
lence. They had significant words to distinguish 
their members; and for the same purpose they 
used emblems taken from the art of building. 

— JosepH Da Costa, Dionysian Artificers 


We need not then consider tt improbable, if in 
the dark centuries when the Roman empire was 
dying out, and its glorious temples falling into 
ruin; when the arts and sciences were falling into 
disuse or being enslaved; and when no place was 
safe from persecution and warfare, the guild of 
the Architects should fly for safety to almost the 
only free spot in Italy; and here, though they 
could no longer practice thew craft, they pre- 
served the legendary knowledge and precepts 
which, as history implies, came down to them 
through Vitruvius from older sources, some say 
from Solomon's builders themselves. 

— LEADER Scort, The Cathedral Builders 


CHAPTER V 


The Collegia 


O far in our study we have found that from ear- 
liest time architecture was related to religion; 
that the working tools of the builder were emblems 
of moral truth; that there were great secret orders 
using the Drama of Faith as a rite of initiation; and 
that a hidden doctrine was kept for those accounted 
worthy, after trial, to be entrusted with it. Secret 
societies, born of the nature and need of man, there 
have been almost since recorded history began;* but 
as yet we have come upon no separate and distinct 
order of builders. For aught we know there may 
have been such in plenty, but we have no intimation, 
much less a record, of the fact. That is to say, his- 
tory has a vague story to tell us of the earliest 
orders of the builders. 

However, it is more than a mere plausible infer- 
ence that from the beginning architects were mem- 
bers of secret orders; for, as we have seen, not only 
the truths of religion and philosophy, but also the 


1 Primitive Secret Societies, by H. Webster; Secret Societies of 
all Ages and Lands, by W. C. Heckethorn. 


a4 THE BUILDERS 


facts of science and the laws of art, were held as 
secrets to be known only to the few. ‘This was so, 


apparently without exception, among all ancient , 
peoples; so much so, indeed, that we may take it as vi 
certain that the builders of old time were initiates.” 


Of necessity, then, the arts of the craft were secrets 
jealously guarded, and the architects themselves, 
while they may have employed and trained ordinary 
workmen, were men of learning and influence. 
Such glimpses of early architects as we have con- 
firm this inference, as, for example, the noble hymn 
to the Sun-god written by Suti and Hor, two archi- 
tects employed by Amenhotep III, of Egypt.’ Just 
when the builders began to form orders of their 
own no one knows, but it was perhaps when the 
Mystery-cults began to journey abroad into other 
lands. What we have to keep in mind is that all the 
arts had their home in the temple, from which, as 
time passed, they spread out fan-wise along all the 
paths of culture. 

Keeping in mind the secrecy of the laws of build- 
ing, and the sanctity with which all science and art 
were regarded, we have a key whereby to interpret 


1 We may add the case of Weshptah, one of the viziers of the 
Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, about 2700 B. C., and also the royal archi- 
tect, for whom the great tomb was built, endowed, and furnished 
by the king (Religion in Egypt, by Breasted, lecture ii); also the 
statue of Semut, chief of Masons under Queen Hatasu, now in 
Berlin. 


THE COLLEGIA 75 


the legends woven about the building of the temple 
of Solomon. Few realize how high that temple on 
Mount Moriah towered in the history of the olden 
world, and how the story of its building haunted 
the legends and traditions of the times following. 
Of these legends there were many, some of them 
wildly improbable, but the persistence of the tradi- 
tion, and its consistency withal, despite many varia- 
tions, is a fact of no small moment. Nor is this 
tradition to be wondered at, since time has shown 
that the building of the temple at Jerusalem was an 
event of world-importance, not only to the Hebrews, 
but to other nations, more especially the Phoent- 
cians. ‘The histories of both peoples make much of 
the building of the Hebrew temple, of the friendship 
of Solomon and Hiram I, of Tyre, and of the har- 
mony between the two peoples; and Phoenician tra- 
dition has it that Solomon presented Hiram with a 
duplicate of the temple, which was erected in Tyre.’ 

Clearly, the two nations were drawn closely to- 
gether, and this fact carried with it a mingling of 
religious influences and ideas, as was true between 
the Hebrews and other nations, especially Egypt 
and Phoenicia, during the reign of Solomon. Now 


1 Historians His. World, vol. ii, chap. iii. Josephus gives an 
elaborate account of the temple, including the correspondence be- 
tween Solomon and Hiram of Tyre (Jewish Antiquities, bk. viii, 
chaps. 2-6). 


76 THE BUILDERS 


the religion of the Phoenicians at this time, as all 
agree, was the Egyptian religion in a modified 
form, Dionysius having taken the role of Osiris in 
the drama of faith in Greece, Syria, and Asia 
Minor. ‘Thus we have the Mysteries of Egypt, in 
which Moses was learned, brought to the very door 
of the temple of Solomon, and that, too, at a time 
favorable to their impress. The Hebrews were not 
architects, and it is plain from the records that the 
temple — and, indeed, the palaces of Solomon — 
were designed and erected by Phoenician builders, 
and for the most part by Phoenician workmen and 
materials. Josephus adds that the architecture of 
the temple was of the style called Grecian. So 
much would seem to be fact, whatever may be said 
of the legends flowing from it. 

If, then, the laws of building were secrets known 
only to initiates, there must have been a secret or- 
der of architects who built the temple of Solomon. 
Who were they? They were almost certainly the 
Dionysian Artificers — not to be confused with the 
play-actors called by the same name later — an or- 
der of builders who erected temples, stadia, and 
theaters in Asia Minor, and who were at the same 
time an order of the Mysteries under the tutelage 
of Bacchus before that worship declined, as it did 
later in Athens and Rome, into mere revelry.* As 


1 Symbolism of Masonry, Mackey, chap. vi; also in Mackey’s 
Encyclopedia of Masonry, both of which were drawn from History 


THE COLLEGIA ii 


such, they united the art of architecture with the 
old Egyptian drama of faith, representing in their 
ceremonies the murder of Dionysius by the Titans 
and his return to life. So that, blending the sym- 
bols of Astronomy with those of Architecture, by a 
slight change made by a natural process, how easy 
for the master-artist of the temple-builders to be- 
come the hero of the ancient drama of immortality.* 


of Masonry, by Laurie, chap. i; and Laurie in turn derived his facts 
from a Sketch for the History of the Dionysian Artificers, A Frag- 
ment, by H. J. Da Costa (1820). Why Waite and others brush 
the Dionysian architects aside as a dream is past finding out in view 
of the evidence and authorities put forth by Da Costa, nor do they 
give any reason for so doing. “Lebedos was the seat and assembly 
of the Dionysian Artificers, who inhabit Ionia to the Hellespont; 
there they had annually their solemn meetings and festivities in 
honor of Bacchus,” wrote Strabo (lib. xiv, 921). They were a 
secret society having signs and words to distinguish their members 
(Robertson’s Greece), and used emblems taken from the art of 
building (Eusebius, de Prep. Evang. iii, c. 12). They entered 
Asia Minor and Phoenicia fifty years before the temple of Solomon 
was built, and Strabo traces them on into Syria, Persia, and India. 
Surely here are facts not to be swept aside as romance because, 
forsooth, they do not fit certain theories. Moreover, they explain 
many things, as we shall see. é 

1 Rabbinic legend has it that all the workmen on the temple were 
killed, so that they should not build another temple devoted to 
idolatry (Jewish Encyclopedia, article “Freemasonry”). Other 
legends equally absurd cluster about the temple and its building, 
none of which is to be taken literally. As a fact, Hiram the 
architect, or rather artificer in metals, did not lose his life, but, as 
Josephus tells us, lived to good age and died at Tyre. What the 
legend is trying to tell us, however, is that at the building of the 
temple the Mysteries mingled with Hebrew faith, each mutually in- 
fluencing the other. 


78 THE BUILDERS 


Whether or not this fact can be verified from his- 
tory,such is the form in which the tradition has come 
down to us, surviving through long ages and tri- 
umphing over all vicissitude.* Secret orders have 
few records and their story is hard to tell, but this 
account is perfectly in accord with the spirit and 
setting of the situation, and there is neither fact nor 
reason against it. While this does not establish it 
as true historically, it surely gives it validity as a 
prophecy, if nothing more.’ 


1 Strangely enough, there is a sect or tribe called the Druses, 
now inhabiting the Lebanon district, who claim to be not only the 
descendants of the Phoenicians, but the builders of King Solomon’s 
temple. So persistent and important among them is this tradition 
that their religion is built about it—if indeed it be not something 
more than a legend. They have Khalwehs, or temples, built after 
the fashion of lodges, with three degrees of initiation, and, though 
an agricultural folk, they use signs and tools of building as emblems 
of moral truth. They have signs, grips, and passwords for recog- 
nition. In the words of their lawgiver, Hamze, their creed reads: 
“The belief in the Truth of One God shall take the place of Prayer; 
the exercise of brotherly love shall take the place of Fasting; and 
the daily practice of acts of Charity shall take the place of Alms- 
giving.” Why such a people, having such a tradition? Where did 
they get it? What may this fact set in the fixed and changeless 
East mean? (See the essay of Hackett Smith on “The Druses and 
Their Relation to Freemasonry,” and the discussion following, Ars 
Quatuor Coronatorum, iv. 7-19.) 

2 Rawlinson, in his History of Phoenicia, says the people “had 
for ages possessed the mason’s art, it having been brought in very 
early days from Egypt.” Sir C. Warren found on the foundation 
stones at Jerusalem Mason’s marks in Phoenician letters (A. O. Cm 
GND sil Os) 


THE COLLEGIA 70 


After all, then, the tradition that Masonry, not 
unlike the Masonry we now know, had its origin 
while the temple of King Solomon was building, 
and was given shape by the two royal friends, may 
not be so fantastic as certain superior folk seem to 
think it. How else can we explain the fact that 
when the Knights of the Crusades went to the Holy 
Land they came back a secret, oath-bound frater- 
nity? Also, why is it that, through the ages, we see 
bands of builders coming from the East calling 
themselves “sons of Solomon,” and using his inter- 
laced triangle-seal as their emblem? Strabo, as we 
have seen, traced the Dionysiac builders eastward 
into Syria, Persia, and even India. They may also 
be traced westward. Traversing Asia Minor, they 
entered Europe by way of Constantinople, and we 
follow them through Greece to Rome, where al- 
ready several centuries before Christ we find them 
bound together in corporations called Collegia. 
These lodges flourished in all parts of the Roman 
Empire, traces of their existence having been dis- 
covered in England as early as the middle of the 
first century of our era. 


Ms 


Krause was the first to point out a prophecy of 
Masonry in the old orders of builders, following 


So THE BUILDERS 


their footsteps— not connectedly, of course, for 
there are many gaps — through the Dionysiac fra- 
ternity of Tyre, through the Roman Collegia, to the 
architects and Masons of the Middle Ages. Since 
he wrote, however, much new material has come to 
light, but the date of the advent of the builders in 
Rome is still uncertain. Some trace it to the very 
founding of the city, while others go no further 
back than King Numa, the friend of Pythagoras.’ 
By any account, they were of great antiquity, and 
their influence in Roman history was far-reaching. 
They followed the Roman legions to remote places, 
building cities, bridges, and temples, and it was but 
natural that Mithra, the patron god of soldiers, 
should have influenced their orders. Of this an ex- 
ample may be seen in the remains of the ancient 
Roman villa at Morton, on the Isle of Wight.’ 

As Rome grew in power and became a vast, all- 
embracing empire, the individual man felt, more 


1 See essay on “A Masonic Built City,” by S. R. Forbes, a study 
of the plan and building of Rome, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, iv, 86. 
As there will be many references to the proceedings of the Cor- 
onatorum Lodge of Research, it will be convenient hereafter to use 
only its initials, 4. Q. C., in behalf of brevity. For an account of 
the Collegia in early Christian times, see Roman Life from Nero 
to Aurelius, by Dill (bk. ii, chap. iii); also De Collegia, by Momm- 
sen. There is an excellent article in Mackey’s Encyclopedia of 
Freemasonry, and Gould, His. Masonry, vol. i, chap. i. 

2See Masonic Character of Roman Villa at Morton, by J. F. 
Crease (A. Q. C., iii, 38-59). 


THE COLLEGIA 81 


and more, his littleness and loneliness. This feel- 
ing, together with the increasing specialization of 
industry, begat a passion for association, and Col- 
legia of many sorts were organized. Even a cas- 
ual glance at the inscriptions, under the heading 
Artes et Opificia, will show the enormous develop- 
ment of skilled handicrafts, and how minute was 
their specialization. Every trade soon had its secret 
order, or union, and so powerful did they become 
that the emperors found it necessary to abolish the 
right of free association. Yet even such edicts, 
though effective for a little time, were helpless as 
against the universal craving for combination. 
Ways were easily found whereby to evade the law, 
which had exempted from its restrictions orders 
consecrated by their antiquity or their religious 
character. Most of the Collegia became funerary 
and charitable in their labors, humble folk seeking 
to escape the dim, hopeless obscurity of plebeian life, 
and the still more hopeless obscurity of death. 
Pathetic beyond words are some of the inscriptions 
telling of the horror and loneliness of the grave, of 
the day when no kindly eye would read the forgot- 
ten name, and no hand bring offerings of flowers. 
Fach collegium held memorial services, and marked 
the tomb of its dead with the emblems of its trade: 
if a baker, with a loaf of bread; if a builder, with a 
square, compasses, and the level. 


82 THE BUILDERS 


From the first the Colleges of Architects seem to 
have enjoyed special privileges and exemptions, ow- 
ing to the value of their service to the state, and 
while we do not find them called Free-masons they 
were such in law and fact long before they wore 
the name. They were permitted to have their own 
constitutions and regulations, both secular and re- 
ligious. In form, 1n officers, in emblems a Roman 
Collegium resembled very much a modern Masonic 
Lodge. For one thing, no College could consist of 
less than three persons, and so rigid was this rule 
that the saying, “three make a college,” became a 
maxim of law. Each College was presided over by 
a Magister, or Master, with two decuriones, or war- 
dens, each of whom extended the commands of the 
Master to ‘“‘the brethren of his column.”’ There were 
a secretary, a treasurer, and a keeper of archives, 
and, as the colleges were in part religious and 
usually met near some temple, there was a sacerdos, 
or, as we would say, a priest, or chaplain. The 
members were of three orders, not unlike appren- 
tices, fellows, and masters, or colleagues. What 
ceremonies of initiation were used we do not know, 
but that they were of a religious nature seems cer- 
tain, as each College adopted a patron deity from 
among the many then worshiped. Also, as the 
Mysteries of Isis and Mithra ruled the Roman 


THE COLLEGIA 83 


world by turns, the ancient drama of eternal life 
was never far away. 

Of the emblems of the Collegia, it is enough to 
say that here again we find the simple tools of the 
builder used as teachers of truth for life and hope in 
death. Upon a number of sarcophagi, still extant, 
we find carved the square, the compasses, the cube, 
the plummet, the circle, and always the level. 
There is, besides, the famous Collegium uncovered 
at the excavation of Pompeii in 1878, having been 
buried under the ashes and lava of Mount Vesuvius 
since the year 79 A. D. It stood near the Tragic 
Theater, not far from the Temple of Isis, and by its 
arrangement, with two columns in front and inter- 
laced triangles on the walls, was identified as an 
ancient lodge room. Upon a pedestal in the room 
was found a rare bit of art, unique in design and 
exquisite in execution, now in the National Museum 
at Naples. It is described by S. R. Forbes, in his 
Rambles in Naples, as follows: 

It is a mosaic table of square shape, fixed in a strong 
wooden frame. The ground is of grey green stone, in 
the middle of which is a human skull, made of white, 
grey, and black colors. In appearance the skull is quite 
natural. The eyes, nostrils, teeth, ears, and coronal are 
all well executed. Above the skull is a level of colored 
wood, the points being of brass; and from the top to the 
point, by a white thread, is suspended a plumb-line. Be- 


84 


of 


THE BUILDERS 


low the skull is a wheel of six spokes, and on the upper rim 
of the wheel there is a butterfly with wings of red, edged 
with yellow; its eyes blue. . . On the left is an upright 
spear, resting on the ground; from this there hangs, at- 
tached to a golden cord, a garment of scarlet, also a 
purple robe; whilst the upper part of the spear is sur- 
rounded by a white braid of diamond pattern. To the 
right is a gnarled thorn stick, from which hangs a coarse, 
shaggy piece of cloth in yellow, grey, and brown colors, 
tied with a ribbon; and above it is a leather knap- 
sack. . . Evidently this work of art, by its composi- 
tion, is mystical and symbolical. 


No doubt; and for those who know the meaning 
these emblems there is a feeling of kinship with 


those men, long since fallen into dust, who gathered 
about such an altar. They wrought out in this work 


of 


art their vision of the old-worn pilgrim way of 


life, with its vicissitude and care, the level of mor- 
tality to which all are brought at last by death, and 
the winged, fluttering hope of man. Always a jour- 
ney with its horny staff and wallet, life is sometimes 
a battle needing a spear, but for him who walks up- 
rightly by the plumb-line of rectitude, there is a true 


an 


d victorious hope at the end. 


Of wounds and sore defeat 
I made my battle stay, 
Winged sandals for my feet 
I wove of my delay. 


THE COLLEGIA 85 


Of weariness and fear 

I made a shouting spear, 

Of loss and doubt and dread 
And swift on-coming doom 
I made a helmet for my head, 
And a waving plume. 


III 


Christianity, whose Founder was a Carpenter, 
made a mighty appeal to the working classes of 
Rome. As Deissmann and Harnack have shown, 
the secret of its expansion in the early years was 
that it came down to the man in the street with its 
message of hope and joy. Its appeal was hardly 
heard in high places, but it was welcomed by the 
men who were weary and heavy ladened. Among 
the Collegia it made rapid progress, its Saints tak- 
ing the place of pagan deities as patrons, and its 
spirit of love welding men into closer, truer union. 
When Diocletian determined to destroy Christian- 
ity, he was strangely lenient and patient with the 
Collegia, so many of whose members were of that 
faith. Not until they refused to make a statue of 
Ze sculapius did he vow vengeance and turn on them, 
venting his fury. In the persecution that followed 
four Master Masons and one humble apprentice suf- 
fered cruel torture and death, but they became the 


86 THE BUILDERS 


Four Crowned Martyrs, the story of whose heroic 
fidelity unto death haunted the legends of later 
times. ‘lhey were the patron saints alike of Lom- 
bard and ‘l‘uscan builders, and, later, of the work- 
ing Masons of the Middle Ages, as witness the poem 
in their praise in the oldest record of the Craft, the 
Regius MS. 

With the breaking up of the College of Architects 
and their expulsion from Rome, we come upon a 
period in which it is hard to follow their path. Hap- 
pily the task has been made less baffling by recent 
research, and if we are unable to trace them all the 
way much light has been let into the darkness. 
Hitherto there has been a hiatus also in the history 
of architecture between the classic art of Rome, 
which is said to have died when the Empire fell to 


1Their names were Claudius, Nicostratus, Simphorianus, Cas- 
torius, and Simplicius. Later their bodies were brought from Rome 
to Toulouse where they were placed in a chapel erected in their 
honor in the church of St. Sernin (Martyrology, by Du Saussay). 
They became patron saints of Masons in Germany, France, and 
England (A. Q. C., xii, 196). Ina fresco on the walls of the church 
of St. Lawrence at Rotterdam, partially preserved, they are painted 
with compasses and trowel in hand. With them, however, is an- 
other figure, clad in oriental robe, also holding compasses, but with 
a royal, not a martyr’s, crown. Is he Solomon? Who else can he 
be? The fresco dates from 1641, and was painted by F. Wounters 
(A. Q. C., xii, 202). Even so, those humble workmen, faithful to 
their faith, became saints of the church, and reign with Solomon! 
Once the fresco was whitewashed, but the coating fell off and 
they stood forth with compasses and trowel as before. 


THE COLLEGIA 87 


pieces, and the rise of Gothic art. Just so, in the 
story of the builders one finds a gap of like length, 
between the Collegia of Rome and the cathedral 
artists. While the gap cannot, as yet, be perfectly 
bridged, much has been done to that end by Leader 
Scott in The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a 
Great Masonic Guild — a book itself a work of art 
as well as of fine scholarship. Her thesis is that the 
missing link is to be found in the Magistri Comaci- 
ni, a guild of architects who, on the break-up of the 
Roman Empire, fled to Comacina, a fortified island 
in Lake Como, and there kept alive the traditions of 
classic art during the Dark Ages; that from them 
were developed in direct descent the various styles 
of Italian architecture; and that, finally, they car- 
ried the knowledge and practice of architecture and 
sculpture into France, Spain, Germany, and Eng- 
land. Such a thesis is difficult, and, from its nature, 
not susceptible of absolute proof, but the writer 
makes it as certain as anything can well be. 

While she does not positively affirm that the Co- 
macine Masters were the veritable stock from which 
the Freemasonry of the present day sprang, “we 
may admit,” she says, “that they were the link be- 
tween the classic Collegia and all other art and 
trade Guilds of the Middle Ages. They were Free- 
masons because they were builders of a privileged 


88 THE BUILDERS 


class, absolved from taxes and servitude, and free 
to travel about in times of feudal bondage.’ ‘The 
name Free-mason — Libera muratori—may not 
actually have been used thus early, but the Coma- 
cines were in fact free builders long before the name 
was employed — free to travel from place to place, 
as we see from their migrations; free to fix their 
own prices, while other workmen were bound to 
feudal lords, or by the Statutes of Wages. The au- 
thor quotes in the original Latin an Edict of the 
Lombard King Rotharis, dated November 22, 643, 
in which certain privileges are confirmed to the 
Magistri Comacini and their colligantes. From this 
Fidict it is clear that it is no new order that is al- 
luded to, but an old and powerful body of Masters 
capable of acting as architects, with men who ex- 
ecuted work under them. For the Comacines were 
not ordinary workmen, but artists, including archi- 
tects, sculptors, painters, and decorators, and if af- 
finities of style left in stone be adequate evidence, to 
them were due the changing forms of architecture 
in Europe during the cathedral-building period. 
Everywhere they left their distinctive impress in a 
way so unmistakable as to leave no doubt. 

Under Charlemagne the Comacines began their 
many migrations, and we find them following the 
missionaries of the church into remote places, from 


THE COLLEGIA 89 


Sicily to Britain, building churches. When Au- 
gustine went to convert the British, the Comacines 
followed to provide shrines, and Bede, as early as 
674, in mentioning that builders were sent for from 
Gaul to build the church at Wearmouth, uses phras- 
es and words found in the Edict of King Rotharis. 
For a long time the changes in style of architecture, 
appearing simultaneously everywhere over Europe, 
from Italy to England, puzzled students.*. Further 
knowledge of this powerful and widespread order 
explains it. It also accounts for the fact that no in- 
dividual architect can be named as the designer of | 
any of the great cathedrals. Those cathedrals were | 
the work, not of individual artists, but of an order 
who planned, built, and adorned them. In 1355 the 
painters of Siena seceded, as the German Masons 
did later, and the names of individual artists who 
worked for fame and glory begin to appear; but 
up to that time the Order was supreme. Artists 
from Greece and Asia Minor, driven from their 
homes, took refuge with the Comacines, and Leader 
Scott finds in this order a possible link, by tradition 
at least, with the temple of Solomon. At any rate, 
all through the Dark Ages the name and fame of 
the Hebrew king lived in the minds of the builders. 

An inscribed stone, dating from 712, shows that 

1 History of Middle Ages, Hallam, vol. ii, 547. 


90 THE BUILDERS 


the Comacine Guild was organized as Magistri and 
Discipuli, under a Gastaldo, or Grand Master, the 
very same terms as were kept in the lodges later. 
Moreover, they called their meeting places log gia, 
a long list of which the author recites from the 
records of various cities, giving names of officers, 
and, often, of members. ‘They, too, had their mas- 
ters and wardens, their oaths, tokens, grips, and 
passwords which formed a bond of union stronger 
than legal ties. They wore white aprons and gloves, 
and revered the Four Crowned Martyrs of the Or- 
der. Square, compasses, level, plumb-line, and arch 
appear among their emblems. “King Solomon’s 
Knot” was one of their symbols, and the endless, 
interwoven cord, symbol of Eternity which has 
neither beginning nor end, was another. Later, 
however, the Lion’s Paw seems to have become 
their chief emblem. From illustrations given by the 
author they are shown in their regalia, with apron 
and emblems, clad as the keepers of a great art and 
teaching of which they were masters. 

Here, of a truth, is something more than proph- 
ecy, and those who have any regard for facts will 
not again speak lightly of an order having such an- 
cestors as the great Comacine Masters. Had Fer- 
gusson known their story, he would not have paused 
in his History of Architecture to belittle the Free- 


THE COLLEGIA gt 


masons as incapable of designing a cathedral, while 
puzzling the while as to who did draw the plans for 
those dreams of beauty and prayer. Hereafter, if 
any one asks to know who uplifted those massive 
piles in which was portrayed the great drama of 
madiaeval worship, he need not remain uncertain. 
With the decline of Gothic architecture the order of 
Free-masons also suffered decline, as we shall see, 
but did not cease to exist — continuing its symbolic 


tradition amidst varying, and often sad, vicissitude. _ ‘ 


until 1717, when it became a fraternity teaching 
spiritual faith by allegory and moral science by sym- 
bols. 


Part II—History 


May 


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FREE-MASONS 


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The curious history of Freemasonry has un- 
fortunately been treated only by its panegyrists 
or calummators, both equally mendacious. I do 
not wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft; 
but it would be interesting to know more of their 
history during the period when they were liter- 
ally architects. They are charged by an act of 
Parliament with fixing the price of their labor in 
their annual chapters, contrary to the statute of 
laborers, and such chapters were consequently 
prohibited. This is their first persecution; they 
have since undergone others, and are perhaps re- 
served for still more. It 1s remarkable, that 
Masons were never legally incorporated, lke 
other traders; their bond of union being stronger 
than any charter. 

—Henry Haram, The Middle Ages 


CHAPTER I 


Free-Masons 


|! 


ROM the foregoing pages it must be evident 
that Masonry, as wé find it in the Middle Ages, 
was not a novelty. Already, if we accept its own 
records, it was hoary with age, having come down 
from a far past, bringing with it a remarkable de- 
posit of legendary lore. Also, it had in its keeping 
the same simple, eloquent emblems which, as we 
have seen, are older than the oldest living religion, 
which it received as an inheritance and has trans- 
mitted as a treasure. Whatever we may think of 
the legends of Masonry, as recited in its oldest docu- 
ments, its symbols, older than the order itself, link 
it with the earliest thought and faith of the race. 
No doubt those emblems lost some of their luster in 
the troublous time of transition we are about to tra- 
verse, but their beauty never wholly faded, and they 
had only to be touched to shine. 
If not the actual successors of the Roman College 
of Architects, the great order of Comacine Masters 
was founded upon its ruins, and continued its tra- 


98 THE BUILDERS 


dition both of sybolism and of art. Returning to 
Rome after the death of Diocletian, we find them 
busy there under Constantine and Theodosius; and 
from remains recently brought to knowledge it is 
plain that their style of building at that time was 
very like that of the churches built at Hexham and 
York in England, and those of the Ravenna, also 
nearly contemporary. They may not have been ac- 
tually called Free-masons as early as Leader Scott 
insists they were,’ but they were free in fact, travel- 
ing far and near where there was work to do, fol- 
lowing the missionaries of the Church as far as 
England. When there was need for the name Free- 
masons, it was easily suggested by the fact that the 
cathedral-builders were quite distinct from the 
Guild-masons, the one being a universal order 
whereas the other was local and restricted. Older 
than Guild-masonry, the order of the cathedral- 
builders was more powerful, more artistic, and, it 
may be added, more religious; and it is from this 
order that the Masonry of today is descended. 
Since the story of the Comacine Masters has come 
to light, no doubt any longer remains that during 
the building period the order of Masons was at the 
height of its influence and power. At that time the 
building art stood above all other arts, and made the 
other arts bow to it, commanding the services of the 
1 The Cathedral Builders, chap. i. 


FREE-MASONS 99 


most brilliant intellects and of the greatest artists 
of the age. Moreover, its symbols were wrought in- 
to stone long before they were written on parch- 
ment, if indeed they were ever recorded at all. Ef- 
forts have been made to rob those old masters of 
their honor as the designers of the cathedrals, but it 
is in vain.” Their monuments are enduring and 
still tell the story of their genius and art. High up- 
on the cathedrals they left cartoons in stone, of 
which Findel gives a list,” portraying with search- 


1“The honor due to the original founders of these edifices is 
almost invariably transferred to the ecclesiastics under whose pat- 
ronage they rose, rather than to the skill and design of the Mas- 
ter Mason, or professional architect, because the only historians 
were monks. . . They were probably not so well versed in 
geometrical science as the Master Masons, for mathematics formed 
a part of monastic learning in a very limited degree.” — James 
Dallaway, Architecture in England; and his words are the more 
weighty for that he is not a Mason. 

2 History of Masonry. In the St. Sebaldus Church, Nuremburg, 
is a carving in stone showing a nun in the embrace of a monk. In 
Strassburg a hog and a goat may be seen carrying a sleeping fox 
as a sacred relic, in advance a bear with a cross and a wolf witha 
taper. An ass is reading mass at an altar. In Wurzburg Cathedral 
are the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, and in the altar of the Church 
of Doberan, in Mecklenburg, placed as Masons use them, and a 
most significant scene in which priests are turning a mill grinding 
out dogmatic doctrines; and at the bottom the Lord’s Supper in 
which the Apostles are shown in well-known Masonic attitudes. 
In the Cathedral of Brandenburg a fox in priestly robes is preaching 
to a flock of geese; and in the Minster at Berne the Pope is placed 
among those who are lost in perdition. These were bold strokes 
which even heretics hardly dared to indulge in. 


T0O THE BUILDERS 


ing satire abuses current in the Church. Such fig- 
ures and devices would not have been tolerated but 
for the strength of the order, and not even then had 
the Church known what they meant to the adepts. 

History, like a mirage, lifts only a part of the 
past into view, leaving much that we should like to 
know in oblivion. At this distance the Middle Ages 
wear an aspect of smooth uniformity of faith and 
opinion, but that is only one of the many illusions 
of time by which we are deceived. What looks like 
uniformity was only conformity, and underneath its 
surface there was almost as much variety of thought 
as there is today, albeit not so freely expressed. 
Science itself, as well as religious ideas deemed 
heretical, sought seclusion ; but the human mind was 
alive and active none the less, and a great secret or- 
der like Masonry, enjoying the protection of the 
Church, yet independent of it, invited freedom of 
thought and faith." The Masons, by the very nature 
of their art, came into contact with all classes of 
men, and they had opportunities to know the defects 


1 History of Masonry, by Steinbrenner, chap. iv. There were, in- 
deed, many secret societies in the Middle Ages, such as the Cathar- 
ists, Albigenses, Waldenses, and others, whose initiates and adher- 
ents traveled through all Europe, forming new communities and 
making proselytes not only among the masses, but also among 
nobles, and even among the monks, abbots, and bishops. Occultists, 
Alchemists, Kabbalists, all wrought in secrecy, keeping their flame 
aglow under the crust of conformity. 


FREE-MASONS IOI 


of the Church. Far ahead of the masses and most 
of the clergy in education, in their travels to and 
fro, not only in Europe, but often extending to the 
far East, they became familiar with widely-differ- 
ing religious views. ‘They had learned to practice 
toleration, and their Lodges became a sure refuge 
for those who were persecuted for the sake of opin- 
ion by bigoted fanaticism. 

While, as an order, the Comacine Masters served 
the Church as builders, the creed required for ad- 
mission to their fraternity was never narrow, and, 
as we shall see, it became every year broader. Un- 
less this fact be kept in mind, the influence of the 
Church upon Masonry, which no one seeks to mini- 
fy, may easily be exaggerated. Not until cathedral 
building began to decline by reason of the impover- 
ishment of the nations by long wars, the dissolution 
of the monasteries, and the advent of Puritanism, 
did the Church greatly influence the order; and not 
even then to the extent of diverting it from its orig- 
inal and unique mission. Other influences were at 
work betimes, such as the persecution of the Knights 
Templars and the tragic martyrdom of De Molai, 
making themselves felt," and Masonry began to be 
suspected of harboring heresy. So tangled were the 


1 Realities of Masonry, by Blake (chap. ii). While the theory 
of the descent of Masonry from the Order of the Temple is unten- 
able, a connection between the two societies, in the sense in which 


102 THE BUILDERS 


tendencies of that period that they are not easily fol- 
lowed, but the fact emerges that Masonry rapidly 
broadened until its final break with the Church. 
Hardly more than a veneer, by the time of the Ger- 
man Reformation almost every vestige of the im- 
press of the Church had vanished never to return. 
Critics of the order have been at pains to trace this 
tendency, not knowing, apparently, that by so doing 
they only make more emphatic the chief glory of 
Masonry. 


IT 


Unfortunately, as so often happens, no records of 
old Craft-masonry, save those wrought into stone, 
were made until the movement had begun to de- 
cline; and for that reason such documents as have 
come down to us do not show it at its best. Never- 
theless, they range over a period of more than four 
centuries, and are justly held to be the title deeds 
of the Order. Turning to these Old Charges 
an artist may be said to be connected with his employer, is more 
than probable; and a similarity may be traced between the ritual 
of reception in the Order of the Temple and that used by Masons, 
but that of the Temple was probably derived from, or suggested 
by, that of the Masons; or both may have come from an original 
source further back. That the Order of the Temple, as such, did 
not actually coalesce with the Masons seems clear, but many of its 


members sought refuge under the Masonic apron (History of Free- 
masonry and Concordant Orders, by Hughan and Stillson). 


FREE-MASONS 103 


and Constitutions,’ as they are called, we find a body 
of quaint and curious writing, both in poetry and 
prose, describing the Masonry of the late cathedral- 
building period, with glimpses at least of greater 
days of old. Of these, there are more than half a 
hundred — seventy-eight, to be exact— most of 
which have come to light since1860, and all of them, 
it would seem, copies of documents still older. Nat- 
urally they have suffered at the hands of unskilled 
or unlearned copyists, as is evident from errors, em- 
bellishments, and interpolations. They were called 
Old Charges because they contained certain rules as 
to conduct and duties which, in a bygone time, were 
read or recited to a newly admitted member of the 
craft. While they differ somewhat in details, they 
relate substantially the same legend as to the origin 
of the order, its early history, its laws and regula- 
tions, usually beginning with an invocation and end- 
ing with an Amen. 


1 Every elaborate History of Masonry —as, for example, that of 
Gould — reproduces these old documents in full or in digest, with 
exhaustive analyses of and commentaries upon them. Such a task 
obviously does not come within the scope of the present study. 
One of the best brief comparative studies of the Old Charges is an 
essay by W. H. Upton, “The True Text of the Book of Constitu- 
tions,” in that it applies approved methods of historical criticism 
to all of them (4. Q. C., vii, 119). See also Masonic Sketches and 
Reprints, by Hughan. No doubt these Old Charges are familiar, 
or should be familiar, to every intelligent member of the order, 
as a man knows the deeds of his estate. 


TO4 THE BUILDERS 


Only a brief account need here be given of the 
dates and characteristics of these documents, of the 
two oldest especially, with a digest of what they 
have to tell us, first, of the Legend of the order; 
second, its early History; and third, its Moral teach- 
ing, its workings, and the duties of its members. 
The first and oldest of the records is known as the 
Regius MS which, owing to an error of David Cas- 
ley who in his catalogue of the MSS in the King’s 
Library marked it A Poem of Moral Duties, 
was overlooked until James Halliwell discovered 
its real nature in 1839. Although not a Mason, 
Halliwell was attracted by the MS and read an es- 
say on its contents before the Society of Antiqua- 
rians, after which he issued two editions bearing 
date of 1840 and 1844. Experts give it date back 
to 1390, that is to say, fifteen years after the first 
recorded use of the name Free-mason in the history 
of the Company of Masons of the City of London, 
WIS 7 5), 

More poetical in spirit than in form, the old man- 
uscript begins by telling of the number of unem- 
ployed in early days and the necessity of finding 


1The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masonry, by Conder. Also 
exhaustive essays by Conder and Speth, A. Q. C., ix, 29; x, 10. 
Too much, it seems to me, has been made of both the name and 
the date, since the fact was older than either. Findel finds the name 
Free-mason as early as 1212, and Leader Scott goes still further 
back; but the fact may be traced back to the Roman Collegia. 


FREE-MASONS 105 


work, “that they myght gete there lyvyngs therby.”’ 
Euclid was consulted, and recommended the “‘onest 
craft of good masonry,” and the origin of the order 
is found “yn Egypte lande.” Then, by a quick shift, 
we are landed in England “yn tyme of good Kinge 
Adelstonus day,” who is said to have called an as- 
sembly of Masons, when fifteen articles and as many 
points were agreed upon as rules of the craft, each 
point being duly described. The rules resemble the 
Ten Commandments in an extended form, closing 
with the legend of the Four Crowned Martyrs, as 
an incentive to fidelity. Then the writer takes up 
again the question of origins, going back this time 
to the days of Noah and the Flood, mentioning the 
tower of Babylon and the great skill of Euclid, who 
is said to have commenced ‘“‘the syens seven.” The 
seven sciences are then named, to-wit, Grammar, 
Logic, Rhetoric, Music, Astronomy, Arithmetic, 
Geometry, and each explained. Rich reward is held 
out to those who use the seven sciences aright, and 
the MS proper closes with the benediction: 
Amen! Amen! so mote it be! 
So say we all for Charity. 


There follows a kind of appendix, evidently added 
by a priest, consisting of one hundred lines in which 
pious exhortation is mixed with instruction in eti- 
quette, such as lads and even men unaccustomed to 


106 THE BUILDERS 


polite society and correct deportment would need. 
These lines were in great part extracted from /n- 
structions for Parish Priests, by Mirk, a manual in 
use at the time. The whole poem, if so it may be 
called, is imbued with the spirit of freedom, of glad- 
ness, of social good will; so much so, that both Gould 
and Albert Pike think it points to the existence of 
symbolic Masonry at the date from which it speaks, 
and may have been recited or sung by some club 
commemorating the science, but not practicing the 
art, of Masonry. ‘They would find intimation of the 
independent existence of speculative Masonry thus 
early, in a society from whom all but the memory 
or tradition of its ancient craft had departed. One 
hesitates to differ with writers so able and distin- 
guished, yet this inference seems far-fetched, if not 
forced. Of the existence of symbolic Masonry at 
that time there is no doubt, but of its independent 
existence it is not easy to find even a hint in this old 
poem. Nor would the poem be suitable for a mere 
social, or even a symbolic guild, whereas the spirit 
of genial, joyous comradeship which breathes 
through it is of the very essence of Masonry, and 
has ever been present when Masons meet. 

Next in order of age is the Cooke MS, dating 
from the early part of the fifteenth century, and first 
published in 1861. If we apply the laws of higher- 


FREE-MASONS 107 


criticism to this old document a number of thing's 
appear, as obvious as they are interesting. Not on- 
ly is it a copy of an older record, like all the MSS 
we have, but it is either an effort to join two docu- 
ments together, or else the first part must be re- 
garded as a long preamble to the manuscript which 
forms the second part. For the two are quite un- 
like in method and style, the first being diffuse, with 
copious quotations and references to authorities,’ 
while the second is simple, direct, unadorned, and 
does not even allude to the Bible. Also, it is evi- 
dent that the compiler, himself a Mason, is trying 
to harmonize two traditions as to the origin of the 
order, one tracing it through Egypt and the other 
through the Hebrews; and it is hard to tell which 
tradition he favors most. Hence a duplication of the 
traditional history, and an odd mixture of names 
and dates, often, indeed, absurd, as when he makes 
Euclid a pupil of Abraham. What is clear is that, 
having found an old Constitution of the Craft, he 
thought to write a kind of commentary upon it, 
adding proofs and illustrations of his own, though 
he did not manage his materials very successfully. 


1 He refers to Herodotus as the Master of History; quotes from 
the Polychronicon, written by a Benedictine monk who died in 1360; 
from De Imagine Mundi, Isodorus, and frequently from the Bible. 
Of more than ordinary learning for his day and station, he did not 
escape a certain air of pedantry in his use of authorities. 


108 THE BUILDERS 


After his invocation,’ the writer begins with a 
list of the Seven Sciences, giving quaint definitions 
of each, but in a different order from that recited 
in the Regius Poem; and he exalts Geometry above 
all the rest as “the first cause and foundation of all 
crafts and sciences.” ‘Then follows a brief sketch 
of the sons of Lamech, much as we find it in the 
book of Genesis which, like the old MS we are here 
studying, was compiled from two older records: the 
one tracing the descent from Cain, and the other 
from Seth. Jabal and Jubal, we are told, inscribed 
their knowledge of science and handicraft on two 
pillars, one of marble, the other of lateres; and af- 
ter the flood one of the pillars‘was found by Hermes, 
and the other by Pythagoras, who taught the 
sciences they found written thereon. Other MSS 
give Euclid the part here assigned to Hermes. Sure- 
ly this is all fantastic enough, but the blending of 
the names of Hermes, the “father of Wisdom,” who — 
is so supreme a figure in the Egyptian Mysteries, 
and Pythagoras who used numbers as spiritual em- 
blems, with old Hebrew history, is significant. At 


1 These invocations vary in their phraseology, some bearing more 
visibly than others the mark of the Church. Toulmin Smith, in his 
English Guilds, notes the fact that the form of the invocations of 
the Masons “differs strikingly from that of most other Guilds. In 
almost every other case, God the Father Almighty would seem to 
have been forgotten.” But Masons never forgot the corner-stone 
upon which their order and its teachings rest; not for a day. 


FREE-MASONS 109 


any rate, by this route the record reaches Egypt 
where, like the Regius Poem, it locates the origin of 
Masonry. In thus ascribing the origin of Geometry 
to the Egyptians the writer was but following a tra- 
dition that the Egyptians were compelled to invent 
it in order to restore the landmarks effaced by the 
inundations of the Nile; a tradition confirmed by 
modern research. 

Proceding, the compiler tells us that during their 
sojourn in Egypt the Hebrews learned the art and 
secrets of Masonry, which they took with them to 
the promised land. Long years are rapidly sketch- 
ed, and we come to the days of David, who is said to 
have loved Masons well, and to have given them 
“wages nearly as they are now.” There is but a 
meager reference to the building of the Temple of 
Solomon, to which is added: “In other chronicles 
and old books of Masonry, it is said that Solomon 
confirmed the charges that David had given to Ma- 
sons; and that Solomon taught them their usages 
differing but slightly from the customs now in use.” 
While allusion is made to the master-artist of the 
temple, his name is not mentioned, except in dis- 
guise. Not one of the Old Charges of the order ev- 
er makes use of his name, but always employs some 
device whereby to conceal it." Why so, when the 


1Such names as Aynone, Aymon, Ajuon, Dynon, Amon, Anon, 
Annon, and Benaim are used, deliberately, it would seem, and of 


110 THE BUILDERS 


name was well known, written in the Bible which 
lay upon the altar for all to read? Why such re- 
luctance, if it be not that the name and the legend 
linked with it had an esoteric meaning, as it most 
certainly did have long before it was wrought into 
a drama? At this point the writer drops the old 
legend and traces the Masons into France and Eng- 
land, after the manner of the Regius MS, but with 
more detail. Having noted these items, he returns 
to Euclid and brings that phase of the tradition up 
to the advent of the order into England, adding, in 
conclusion, the articles of Masonic law agreed upon 
at an early assembly, of which he names nine, in- 
stead of the fifteen recited in the Regius Poem. 
What shall we say of this Legend, with its re- 
curring and insistent emphasis upon the antiquity 
of the order, and its linking of Egypt with Israel? 
For one thing, it explodes the fancy that the idea 
of the symbolical significance of the building of the 
Temple of Solomon originated with, or was suggest- 
ed by, Bacon’s New Atlantis. Hereis a body of tra- 
dition uniting the Egyptian Mysteries with the He- 
brew history of the Temple in a manner unmistak- 
able. Wherefore such names as Hermes, Pythag- 


set design. The Inigo Jones MS uses the Bible name, but, though 
dated 1607, it has been shown to be apocryphal. See Gould’s His- 
tory, appendix. Also Bulletin of Supreme Council S. J., U. S. 
(vii, 200), that the Strassburg builders pictured the legend in stone. 


FREE-MASONS III 


oras, and Euclid, and how did they come into the 
old craft records if not through the Comacine art- 
ists and scholars? With the story of that great 
order before us, much that has hitherto been ob- 
scure becomes plain, and we recognize in these Old 
Charges the inaccurate and perhaps faded tradition 
of a lofty symbolism, an authentic scholarship, and 
an actual history. As Leader Scott observes, after 
reciting the old legend in its crudest form: 


The significant point is that all these names and Ma- 
sonic emblems point to something real which existed in 
some long-past time, and, as regards the organization 
and nomenclature, we find the whole thing in its vital 
and actual working form in the Comacine Guild. 


Of interest here, as a kind of bridge between old 
legend and the early history of the order in Eng 
land, and also as a different version of the legend 
itself, is another document dating far back. ‘There 
was a MS discovered in the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford about 1696, supposed to have been written 
in the year 1436, which purports to be an examina- 
tion of a Mason by King Henry VI, and is allowed 
by all to be genuine. Its title runs as follows: 
“Certain questions with answers to the same con- 
cerning the mystery of masonry written by King 
Henry the Sixth and faithfully copied by me, John 

1The Cathedral Builders, bk. i, chap. i. 


112 THE BUILDERS 


Laylande, antiquarian, by command of his high- 
ness.’ Written in quaint old English, it would 
doubtless be unintelligible to all but antiquarians, 
but it reads after this fashion: 


What mote it be? — It is the knowledge of nature, and 
the power of its various operations; particularly the skill 
of reckoning, of weights and measures, of constructing 
buildings and dwellings of all kinds, and the true man- 
ner of forming all things for the use of man. 

Where did it begin? —It began with the first men of 
the East, who were before the first men of the West, and 
coming with it, it hath brought all comforts to the wild 
and comfortless. 

Who brought it to the West? — The Phoenicians who, 
being great merchants, came first from the East into 
Phoenicia, for the convenience of commerce, both East 
and West by the Red and Mediterranean Seas. 

How came it into England? — Pythagoras, a Grecian, 
traveled to acquire knowledge in Egypt and Syria, and 
in every other land where the Phoenicians had planted 
Masonry; and gaining admittance into all lodges of 
Masons, he learned much, and returned and dwelt in 
Grecia Magna, growing and becoming mighty wise and 
greatly renowned. Here he formed a great lodge at 
Crotona, and made many Masons, some of whom traveled 
into France, and there made many more, from whence, 
in process of time, the art passed into England. 


Ill 


With the conquest of Britain by the Romans, the 
Collegia, without which no Roman society was com- 


FREE-MASONS 113 


plete, made their advent into the island, traces of 
their work remaining even to this day. Under the 
direction of the mother College at Rome, the Brit- 
ons are said to have attained to high degree of ex- 
cellence as builders, so that when the cities of Gaul 
and the fortresses along the Rhine were destroyed, 
Chlorus, A. D. 298, sent to Britain for architects 
to repair or rebuild them. Whether the Collegia 
existed in Britain after the Romans left, as some 
affirm, or were suppressed, as we know they were 
on the Continent when the barbarians overran it, 
is not clear. Probably they were destroyed, or 
nearly so, for with the revival of Christianity in 
598 A. D., we find Bishop Wilfred of York joining 
with the Abbott of Wearmouth in sending to 
France and Italy to induce Masons to return and 
build in stone, as he put it, “after the Roman man- 
ner.” This confirms the Italian chroniclists who re- 
late that Pope Gregory sent several of the fraternity 
of Libert muratori with St. Augustine, as, later, they 
followed St. Boniface into Germany. 

Again, in 604, Augustine sent the monk Pietro 
back to Rome with a letter to the same Pontiff, beg- 
ging him to send more architects and workmen, 
which he did. As the Libert muratori were none 
other than the Comacine Masters, it seems certain 
that they were at work in England long before the 
period with which the OLp CHARGES begin their 


114 THE BUILDERS 


1 


story of English Masonry.” Among those sent by 
Gregory was Paulinus, and it is a curious fact that 
he is spoken of under the title of Magister, by which 
is meant, no doubt, that he was a member of the 
Comacine order, for they so described their mem- 
bers; and we know that many monks were enrolled 
in their lodges, having studied the art of building 
under their instruction. St. Hugh of Lincoln was 
not the only Bishop who could plan a church, in- 
struct the workman, or handle a hod. Only, it 
must be kept in mind that these ecclesiastics who 
became skilled in architecture were taught by the 
Masons, and that it was not the monks, as some 
seem to imagine, who taught the Masons their art. 
Speaking of this early and troublous time, Giuseppe 
Merzaria says that only one lamp remained alight, 
making a bright spark in the darkness that extend- 
ed over Europe: | 
It was from the Magistri Comacini. Their respective 
names are unknown, their individual works unspecialized, 
but the breadth of their spirit might be felt all through 
those centuries, and their name collectively is legion. 
We may safely say that of all the works of art between 


1 See the account of “The Origin of Saxon Architecture,” in the 
Cathedral Builders (bk. ii, chap. iii), written by Dr. W. M. Barnes 
in England independently of the author who was living in Italy; 
and it is significant that the facts led both of them to the same 
conclusions. They show quite unmistakably that the Comacine 
builders were in England as early as 600 A. D., both by documents 
and by a comparative study of styles of architecture. 


FREE-MASONS 115 


A. D. 800 and 1000, the greater and better part are due 
to that brotherhood — always faithful and often secret — 
of the Magistri Comacini. The authority and judgment 
of learned men justify the assertion.’ 


Among the learned men who agree with this 
judgment are Kugler of Germany, Ramee of 
France, and Selvatico of Italy, as well as Quatremal 
de Quincy, in his Dictionary of Architecture, who, 
in the article on the Comacine, remarks that “to 
these men, who were both designers and executors, 
architects, sculptors, and mosaicists, may be attrib- 
uted the renaissance of art, and its propagation in 
the southern countries, where it marched with 
Christianity. Certain it is that we owe it to them, 
that the heritage of antique ages was not entirely 
lost, and it is only by their tradition and imitation 
that the art of building was kept alive, producing 
works which we still admire, and which become sur- 
prising when we think of the utter ignorance of all 
science in those dark ages.”’ The English writer, 
Hope, goes further and credits the Comacine order 
with being the cradle of the associations of Free- 
masons, who were, he adds, “the first after Roman 
times to enrich architecture with a complete and 
well-ordinated system, which dominated wherever 
the Latin Church extended its influence.”* So 


1 Maestri Comacini, vol. i, chap. ii. 
2 Story of Architecture, chap. xxii. 


116 THE BUILDERS 


then, even if the early records of old Craft-masonry 
in England are confused, and often confusing, we 
are not left to grope our way from one dim tradi- 
tion to another, having the history and monuments 
of this great order which spans the whole period, 
and links the fraternity of Free-masons with one 
of the noblest chapters in the annals of art. 
Almost without exception the Old Charges begin 
their account of Masonry in England at the time of 
Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great; that 
is, between 925 and g4o0. Of this prince, or knight, 
they record that he was a wise and pacific ruler; 
that “he brought the land to rest and peace, and 
built many great buildings of castles and abbeys, 
for he loved Masons well.” He is also said to have 
called an assembly of Masons at which laws, rules, 
and charges were adopted for the regulation of the 
craft. Despite these specific details, the story of 
Athelstan and St. Alban is hardly more than a 
legend, albeit dating at no very remote epoch, and 
well within the reasonable limits of tradition. Still, 
so many difficulties beset it that it has baffled the 
acutest critics, most of whom throw it aside.* That 


1 Gould, in his History of Masonry (i, 31, 65), rejects the legend 
as having not the least foundation in fact, as indeed, he rejects al- 
most everything that cannot prove itself in a court of law. For the 
other side see a “Critical Examination of the Alban and Athelstan 
Legends,” by C. C. Howard (4. Q. C., vii, 73). Meanwhile, Upton 


FREE-MASONS 117 


is, however, too summary a way of disposing of it, 
since the record, though badly blurred, is obviously 
trying to preserve a fact of importance to the order. 

Usually the assembly in question is located at 
York, in the year 926, of which, however, no slight- 
est record remains. Whether at York or else- 
where, some such assembly must have been con- 
voked, either as a civil function, or as a regular 
meeting of Masons authorized by legal power for 
upholding the honor of the craft; and its articles 
became the laws of the order. It was probably a 
civil assembly, a part of whose legislation was a 
revised and approved code for the regulation of 
Masons, and not unnaturally, by reason of its im- 
portance to the order, it became known as a Masonic 
assembly. Moreover, the Charge agreed upon was 
evidently no ordinary charge, for it is spoken of as 
“the Charge,” called by one MS “a deep charge for 
the observation of such articles as belong to Mason- 
ry,” and by another MS “a rule to be kept forever.” 


points out that St. Alban was the name of a town, not of a man, 
and shows how the error may have crept into the record (A. Q. C., 
vii, 119-131). The nature of the tradition, its details, its motive, 
and the absence of any reason for fiction, should deter us from re- 
jecting it. See two able articles, pro and con, by Begemann and 
Speth, entitled “The Assembly” (A. Q. C., vii). Older Masonic 
writers, like Oliver and Mackey, accepted the York assembly as a 
fact established (American Quarterly Review of Freemasonry, vol. 
i, 546; ii, 245). 


118 THE BUILDERS 


Other assemblies were held afterwards, either an- 
nually or semi-annually, until the time of Inigo 
Jones who, in 1607, became superintendent general 
of royal buildings and at the same time head of the 
Masonic order in England; and he it was who in- 
stituted quarterly gatherings instead of the old an- 
nual assemblies. 

Writers not familiar with the facts often speak 
of Freemasonry as an evolution from Guild-mason- 
ry, but that is to err. They were never at any time 
united or the same, though working almost side by 
side through several centuries. Free-masons exist- 
ed in large numbers long before any city guild of 
Masons was formed, and even after the Guilds be- 
came powerful the two were entirely distinct. The 
Guilds, as Hallam says,’ “were Fraternities by vol- 
untary compact, to relieve each other in poverty, 
and to protect each other from injury. Two essen- 


1 History of the English Constitution. Of course the Guild 
was indigenous to almost every age and land, from China to an- 
cient Rome (The Guilds of China, by H. B. Morse), and they sur- 
vive in the trade and labor unions of our day. The story of Eng- 
lish Guilds has been told by Toulmin Smith, and in the histories of 
particular companies by Herbert and Hazlitt, leaving little for any 
one to add. No doubt the Guilds were influenced by the Free-ma- 
sons in respect of officers and emblems, and we know that some of 
them, like the German Steinmetzen, attached moral meanings to 
their working tools, and that others, like the French Companionage, 
even held the legend of Hiram; but these did not make them Free- 
masons. English writers like Speth go too far when they deny to 


FREE-MASONS 119 


tial characteristics belonged to them: the common 
banquet, and the common purse. They had also, in 
many instances, a religious and sometimes a secret 
ceremonial to knit more firmly the bond of fidelity. 
They readily became connected with the exercises 
of trades, with training of apprentices, and the tra- 
ditional rules of art.’ Guild-masons, it may be 
added, had many privileges, one of which was that 
they were allowed to frame their own laws, and to 
enforce obedience thereto. Each Guild had a 
monopoly of the building in its city or town, except 
ecclesiastical buildings, but with this went serious 
restrictions and limitations. No member of a local 
Guild could undertake work outside his town, but 
had to hold himself in readiness to repair the castle 
or town walls, whereas Free-masons journeyed the 
length and breadth of the land wherever their labor 
called them. Often the Free-masons, when at work 
in a town, employed Guild-masons, but only for 
rough work, and as such called them “rough- 
masons.”’ No Guild-mason was admitted to the 
order of Free-masons unless he displayed unusual 
aptitude both as a workman and as a man of in- 
tellect. Such as adhered only to the manual craft 


the Steinmetzen any esoteric lore, and German scholars like Krause 
and Findel are equally at fault in insisting that they were Free- 
masons. (See essay by Speth, 4. Q. C., i, 17, and History of Ma- 
sonry, by Steinbrenner, chap. iv.) 


120 THE BUILDERS 


and cared nothing for intellectual aims, were per- 
mitted to go back to the Guilds. For the Free- 
masons, be it once more noted, were not only artists 
doing a more difficult and finished kind of work, but 
an intellectual order, having a great tradition of 
science and symbolism which they guarded. 
Following the Norman Conquest, which began in 
1066, England was invaded by an army of ecclesi- 
astics, and churches, monasteries, cathedrals, and 
abbeys were commenced in every part of the coun- 
try. Naturally the Free-masons were much in de- 
mand, and some of them received rich reward for 
their skill as architects — Robertus Cementarius, a 
Master Mason employed at St. Albans in 1077, re- 
ceiving a grant of land and a house in the town.” 
In the reign of Henry II no less than one hundred 
and fifty-seven religious buildings were founded in 
England, and it is at this period that we begin to 
see evidence of a new style of architecture — the 
Gothic. Most of the great cathedrals of Europe 
date from the eleventh century — the piety of the 
world having been wrought to a pitch of intense ex- 
citement by the expected end of all things, unac- 
countably fixed by popular belief to take place in the 


1 Notes on the Superintendents of English Buildings in the. 
Middle Ages, by Wyatt Papworth. Cementerius is also mentioned 
in connection with the Salisbury Cathedral, again in his capacity as 
a Master Mason. 


FREE-MASONS 121 


year one thousand. When the fatal year — and the 
following one, which some held to be the real date for 
the sounding of the last trumpet — passed without 
the arrival of the dreaded catastrophe, the sense of 
general relief found expression in raising magnifi- 
cent temples to the glory of God who had mercifully 
abstained from delivering all things to destruction. 
And it was the order of Free-masons who made it 
possible for men to “sing their souls in stone,” leav- 
ing for the admiration of after times what Goethe 
called the “frozen music” of the Middle Ages — 
monuments of the faith and gratitude of the race 
which adorn and consecrate the earth. 

Little need be added to the story of Freemasonry 
during the cathedral-building period; its monu- 
ments are its best history, alike of its genius, its 
faith, and its symbols — as witness the triangle and 
the circle which form the keystone of the orna- 
mental tracery of every Gothic temple. Masonry 
was then at the zenith of its power, in its full splen- 
dor, the Lion of the tribe of Judah its symbol, 
strength, wisdom, and beauty its ideals; its motto to 
be faithful to God and the Government; its mission 
to lend itself to the public good and fraternal char- 
ity. Keeper of an ancient and high tradition, it 
was a refuge for the oppressed, and a teacher of 
art and morality to mankind. In 1270, we find 


“122 THE BUILDERS 


Pope Nicholas III confirming all the rights previ- 
' ously granted to the Free-masons, and bestowing on 
them further privileges. Indeed, all the Popes up 
to Benedict XII appear to have conceded marked 
favors to the order, even to the length of exempting 
its members from the necessity of observance of 
the statutes, from municipal regulations, and from 
obedience to royal edicts. 

What wonder, then, that the Free-masons, ere 
long, took Liberty for their motto, and by so doing 
aroused the animosity of those in authority, as well 
as the Church which they had so nobly served. Al- 
ready forces were astir which ultimately issued in 
the Reformation, and it is not surprising that a 
great secret order was suspected of harboring men 
and fostering influences sympathetic with the im- 
pending change felt to be near at hand. As men 
of the most diverse views, political and religious, 
were in the lodges, the order began first to be ac- 


cused of refusing to obey the law, and then to be 


persecuted. In England a statute was enacted 
against the Free-masons in 1356, prohibiting their 
assemblies under severe penalties, but the law seems 
never to have been rigidly enforced; though the 
order suffered greatly in the civil commotions of the 
period. However, with the return of peace after 
the long War of the Roses, Freemasonry revived 


FREE-MASONS 123 


for a time, and regained much of its prestige, add- 
ing to its fame in the rebuilding of London after 
the fire, and in particular of St. Paul’s Cathedral.’ 

When cathedral-building ceased, and the demand 
for highly skilled architects decreased, the order fell 
into decline, but never at any time lost its identity, 
its organization, and its ancient emblems. The 
Masons’ Company of London, though its extant 
records date only from 1620, is considered by its 
historian, Conder, to have been established in 1220, 
if not earlier, at which time there was great activ- 
ity in building, owing to the building of London > 
Bridge, begun in 1176, and of Westminster Abbey 
in 1221; thus reaching back into the cathedral peri- 
od. At one time the Free-masons seem to have 
been stronger in Scotland than in England, or at 
all events to have left behind more records — for 
the minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh go back to 
1599, and the Schaw Statutes to an earlier date. 


1 Hearing that the Masons had certain secrets that could not be 
revealed to her (for that she could not be Grand Master) Queen 
Elizabeth sent an armed force to break up their annual Grand 
Lodge at York, on St. John’s Day, December 27, 1561. But Sir 
Thomas Sackville took care to see that some of the men sent 
were Free-masons, who, joining in the communication, made “a 
very honorable report to the Queen, who never more attempted to 
dislodge or disturb them; but esteemed them a peculiar sort of men, 
that cultivated peace and friendship, arts and sciences, without 
meddling in the affairs of Church or State” (Book of Constitutions, 
by Anderson). 


124 THE BUILDERS 


Nevertheless, as the art of architecture declined 
Masonry declined with it, not a few of its members 
identifying themselves with the Guilds of ordinary 
“rough-masons,’’ whom they formerly held in con- 
tempt; while others, losing sight of high aims, 
turned its lodges into social clubs. Always, how- 
ever, despite defection and decline, there were those, 
as we shall see, who were faithful to the ideals of 
the order, devoting themselves more and more to 
its moral and spiritual teaching until what has come 
to be known as “the revival of 1717.” 


FELLOWCRAFTS 


Noe person (of what degree soever) shalbee 
accepted a Free Mason, unless hee shall have a 
lodge of five Free Masons at least; whereof one 
to be a master, or warden, of that limitt, or divi- 
sion, wherein such Lodge shalbee kept, and an- 
other of the trade of Free Masonry. 

That noe person shalbee accepted a Free 
Mason, but such as are of able body, honest par- 
_entage, good reputation, and observers of the 
laws of the land. 

That noe person shalbee accepted a Free 
Mason, or know the secrets of said Society, until 
hee hath first taken the oath of secrecy hereafter 
following: “I, A. B., doe m the presence of 
Almighty God, and my fellows, and brethren here 
present, promise and declare, that I will not at 
any time hereafter, by any act or circumstance 
whatsoever, directly or indirectly, publish, dis- 
cover, reveal, or make known any of the secrets, 
privileges, or counsels, of the fraternity or fel- 
lowship of Free Masonry, which at this time, or 
any time hereafter, shalbee made known unto 
mee soe helpe mee God, and the holy contents of 
this booke.” — HarLEIAN MS, 1600-1650 


CHAPTER II 


Fellowcrafts 


I 


AVING followed the Free-masons over a long 
period of history, it is now in order to give 
some account of the ethics, organization, laws, em- 
blems, and workings of their lodges. Such a study 
is at once easy and difficult by turns, owing to the 
mass of material, and to the further fact that in 
the nature of things much of the work of a secret 
order is not, and has never been, matter for record. 
By this necessity, not a little must remain obscure, 
but it is hoped that even those not of the order may 
derive a definite notion of the principles and prac- 
tices of the old Craft-masonry, from which the 
Masonry of today is descended. At least, such a 
sketch will show that, from times of old, the order 
of Masons has been a teacher of morality, charity, 
and truth, unique in its genius, noble in its spirit, 
and benign in its influence. 
Taking its ethical teaching first, we have only to 
turn to the Old Charges or Constitutions of the 


128 THE BUILDERS 


order, with their quaint blending of high truth and 
homely craft-law, to find the moral basis of uni- 
versal Masonry. These old documents were a part 
of the earliest ritual of the order, and were recited 
or read to every young man at the time of his ini- 
tiation as an Entered Apprentice. As such, they 
rehearsed the legends, laws, and ethics of the craft 
for his information, and, as we have seen, they in- 
sisted upon the antiquity of the order, as well as its 
service to mankind —a fact peculiar to Masonry, 
for no other order has ever claimed such a legend- 
ary or traditional history. Having studied that 
legendary record and its value as history, it remains 
to examine the moral code laid before the candidate 
who, having taken a solemn oath of loyalty and 
secrecy, was instructed in his duties as an Appren- 
tice and his conduct as a man. What that old code 
lacked in subtlety is more than made up in simplic- 
ity, and it might all be stated in the words of the 
Prophet: ‘“T’o do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly before God,” — the old eternal moral law, 
founded in faith, tried by time, and approved as 
valid for men of every clime, creed, and condition. 

Turning to the Regius MS, we find fifteen 
“points” or rules set forth for the guidance of Fel- 
lowcrafts, and as many for the rule of Master 
Masons.* Later the number was reduced to nine, 


1 Our present craft nomenclature is all wrong; the old order was 
first Apprentice, then Master, then Fellowcraft — mastership being, 


FELLOWCRAFTS 129 


but so far from being an abridgment, it was in fact 
an elaboration of the original code; and by the time 
we reach the Roberts and Watson MSS a similar 
set of requirements for Apprentices had been adopt- 
ed — or rather recorded, for they had been in use 
long before. It will make for clearness if we re- 
verse the order and take the Apprentice charge 
first, as it shows what manner of men were admit- 
ted to the order. No man was made a Mason save 
by his own free choice, and he had to prove himself 
a freeman of lawful age, of legitimate birth, of 
sound body, of clean habits, and of good repute, 
else he was not eligible. Also, he had to bind him- 
self by solemn oath to serve under rigid rules for a 
period of seven years, vowing absolute obedience — 
for the old-time Lodge was a school in which young 


not a degree conferred, but a reward of skill as a workman and of 
merit as a man. The confusion today is due, no doubt, to the cus- 
tom of the German Guilds, where a Fellowcraft had to serve an 
additional two years as a journeyman before becoming a Master. 
No such restriction was known in England. Indeed, the reverse 
was true, and it was not the Fellowcraft but the Apprentice who 
prepared his masterpiece, and if it was accepted, he became a 
Master. Having won his mastership, he was entitled to become 
a Fellowcraft—that is, a peer and fellow of the fraternity which 
hitherto he had only served. Also, we must distinguish between a 
Master and the Master of the Work, now represented by the Mas- 
ter of the Lodge. Between a Master and the Master of the Work 
there was no difference, of course, except an accidental one; they 
were both Masters and Fellows. Any Master (or Fellow) could 
become a Master of the Work at any time, provided he was of suf- 
ficient skill and had the luck to be chosen as such either by the em- 
ployer, or the Lodge, or both. 


130 THE BUILDERS 


men studied, not only the art of building and its 
symbolism, but the seven sciences as well. At first 
the Apprentice was little more than a servant, do- 
ing the most menial work, his period of endenture 
being at once a test of his character and a training 
for his work. If he proved himself trustworthy 
and proficient, his wages were increased, albeit his 
rules of conduct were never relaxed. How austere 
the discipline was may be seen from a summary of 
its rules: 

Confessing faith in God, an Apprentice vowed to 
honor the Church, the State, and the Master under 
whom he served, agreeing not to absent himself 
from the service of the order, by day or night, save 
with the license of the Master. He must be honest, 
truthful, upright, faithful in keeping the secrets of 
the craft, or the confidence of the Master, or of any 
Free-mason, when communicated to him as such. 
Above all he must be chaste, never committing adul- 
tery or fornication, and he must not marry, or con- 
tract himself to any woman, during his apprentice- 
ship. He must be obedient to the Master without 
argument or murmuring, respectful to all Free- 
masons, courteous, avoiding obscene or uncivil 
speech, free from slander, dissension, or dispute. 
He must not haunt or frequent any tavern or ale- 
house, or so much as go into them except it be upon 


FELLOWCRAFTS 131 


an errand of the Master or with his consent, using 
neither cards, dice, nor any unlawful game, 
“Christmas time excepted.” He must not steal any- 
thing even to the value of a penny, or suffer it to 
be done, or shield anyone guilty of theft, but report 
the fact to the Master with all speed. 

After seven long years the Apprentice brought 
his masterpiece to the Lodge — or, in earlier times, 
to the annual Assembly *— and on strict trial and 
due examination was declared a Master. There- 
upon he ceased to be a pupil and servant, passed in- 
to the ranks of Fellowcrafts, and became a free 
man capable, for the first time in his life, of earning 
his living and choosing his own employer. Having 
selected a Mark* by which his work could be iden- 


1 The older MSS indicate that initiations took place, for the most 
part, at the annual Assemblies, which were bodies not unlike the 
Grand Lodges of today, presided over by a President—a Grand 
Master in fact, though not in name. Democratic in government, as 
Masonry has always been, they received Apprentices, examined can- 
didates for mastership, tried cases, adjusted disputes, and regulated 
the craft; but they were also occasions of festival and social good 
will. At a later time they declined, and the functions of initiation 
more and more reverted to the Lodges. 

2The subject of Mason’s Marks is most interesting, particularly 
with reference to the origin and growth of Gothic architecture, but 
too intricate to be entered upon here. As for example, an essay en- 
titled “Scottish Mason’s Marks Compared with Those of Other 
Countries,” by Prof. T. H. Lewis, British Archaeological Association, 
1888, and the theory there advanced that some great unknown archi- 
tect introduced Gothic architecture from the East, as shown by the 


132 THE BUILDERS 


tified, he could then take his kit of tools and travel 
as a Master of his art, receiving the wages of a 
Master — not, however, without first reaffirming 
his vows of honesty, truthfulness, fidelity, temper- 
ance, and chastity, and assuming added obligations 
to uphold the honor of the order. Again he was 
sworn not to lay bare, nor to tell to any man what 
he heard or saw done in the Lodge, and to keep 
the secrets of a fellow Mason as inviolably as his 
own—unless such a secret imperiled the good 
name of the craft. He furthermore promised to 
act as mediator between his Master and his Fellows, 
and to deal justly with both parties. If he saw a 
Fellow hewing a stone which he was in a fair way 
/to spoil, he must help him without loss of time, if 
able to do so, that the whole work be not ruined. 
Or if he met a fellow Mason in distress, or sorrow, 
he must aid him so far as lay within his power. In 
short, he must live in justice and honor with all 
men, especially with the members of the order, “that 
the bond of mutual charity and love may augment 
and continue.” 

Still more binding, if possible, were the vows of 
a Fellowcraft when he was elevated to the dignity 
of Master of the Lodge or of the Work. Once 


difference in Mason’s Marks as compared with those of the Norman 
period. (Also proceedings of A. Q. C., iii, 65-81.) 


FELLOWCRAFTS 133 


more he took solemn oath to keep the secrets of the 
order unprofaned, and more than one old MS 
quotes the Golden Rule as the law of the Master’s 
office. He must be steadfast, trusty, and true; pay 
his Fellows truly; take no bribe; and as a judge 
stand upright. He must attend the annual Assem- 
bly, unless disabled by illness, if within fifty miles — 
the distance varying, however, in different MSS. 
He must be careful in admitting Apprentices, tak- 
ing only such as are fit both physically and morally, 
and keeping none without assurance that he would 
stay seven years in order to learn his craft. He 
must be patient with his pupils, instruct them dili- 
gently, encourage them with increased pay, and not 
permit them to work at night, “unless in the pursuit 
of knowledge, which shall be a sufficient excuse.”’ 
He must be wise and discreet, and undertake no 
work he cannot both perform and complete equally 
to the profit of his employer and the craft. Should 
a Fellow be overtaken by error, he must be gentle, 
skilful, and forgiving, seeking rather to help than 
to hurt, abjuring scandal and bitter words. He 
must not attempt to supplant a Master of the Lodge 
or of the Work, or belittle his work, but recommend 
it and assist him in improving it. He must be lib- 
eral in charity to those in need, helping a Fellow 
who has fallen upon evil lot, giving him work and 


134 THE BUILDERS 


wages for at least a fortnight, or if he has no work, 
“relieve him with money to defray his reasonable 
charges to the next Lodge.” For the rest, he must 
in all ways act in a manner befitting the nobility of 
his office and his order. 

Such were some of the laws of the moral life by 
which the old Craft-masonry sought to train its 
members, not only to be good workmen, but to be 
good and true men, serving their Fellows; to which, 
as the Rawlinson MS tells us, “divers new articles 
have been added by the free choice and good con- 
sent and best advice of the Perfect and True Ma- 
sons, Masters, and Brethren.” If, as an ethic of 
life, these laws seem simple and rudimentary, they 
are none the less fundamental, and they remain to 
this day the only gate and way by which those must 
enter who would go up to the House of the Lord. 
As such they are great and saving things to lay to 
heart and act upon, and if Masonry taught nothing 
else its title to the respect of mankind would be 
clear. They have a double aspect: first, the build- 
ing of a spiritual man upon immutable moral foun- 
dations; and second, the great and simple religious 
faith in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of 
man, and the Life Eternal, taught by Masonry from 
its earliest history to this good day. Morality and 
theistic religion — upon these two rocks Masonry 


FELLOWCRAFTS 135 


has always stood, and they are the only basis upon 
which man may ever hope to rear the spiritual edi- 
fice of his life, even to the capstone thereof. 


I] 


Imagine, now, a band of these builders, bound 
together by solemn vows and mutual interests, jour- 
neying over the most abominable roads toward the 
site selected for an abbey or cathedral. Traveling 
was attended with many dangers, and the company 
was therefore always well armed, the disturbed 
state of the country rendering such a precaution 
necessary. Tools and provisions belonging to the 
party were carried on pack-horses or mules, placed 
in the center of the convoy, in charge of keepers. 
The company consisted of a Master Mason direct- 
ing the work, Fellows of the craft, and Apprentices 
serving their time. Besides these we find sub- 
ordinate laborers, not of the Lodge though in it, 
termed layers, setters, tilers, and so forth. Mas- 
ters and Fellows wore a distinctive costume, which 
remained almost unchanged in its fashion for no 
less than three centuries.’ Withal, it was a serious 


1 History of Masonry, Steinbrenner. It consisted of a short 
black tunic —in summer made of linen, in winter of wool— open at 
the sides, with a gorget to which a hood was attached; round the 
Waist was a leathern girdle, from which depended a sword and a 
satchel. Over the tunic was a black scapulary, similar to the habit 


136 THE BUILDERS 


company, but in nowise solemn, and the tedium of 
the journey was no doubt beguiled by song, story, 
and the humor incident to travel. 

“Wherever they came,’ writes Mr. Hope in his 
Essay on Architecture, “in the suite of missionaries, 
or were called by the natives, or arrived of their 
own accord, to seek employment, they appeared 
headed by a chief surveyor, who governed the whole 
troop, and named one man out of every ten, under 
the name of warden, to overlook the other nine, set 
themselves to building temporary huts for their hab- 
itation around the spot where the work was to be 
carried on, regularly organized their different de- 
partments, fell to work, sent for fresh supplies of 
their brethren as the object demanded, and, when all 
was finished, again they raised their encampment, 
and went elsewhere to undertake other work.”’ 

Here we have a glimpse of the methods of the 
Free-masons, of their organization, almost military 
in its order and dispatch, and of their migratory 
life; although they had a more settled life than this 
ungainly sentence allows, for long time was re- 


of a priest, tucked under the girdle when they were working, but 
on holydays allowed to hang down. No doubt this garment also 
served as a coverlet at night, as was the custom of the Middle Ages, 
sheets and blankets being luxuries enjoyed only by the rich and 
titled (History of Agriculture and Prices in England, T. Rogers). 
On their heads they wore large felt or straw hats, and tight leather 
breeches and long boots completed the garb. 


FELLOWCRAFTS 137 


quired for the building of a great cathedral. Some- 
times, it would seem, they made special contracts 
with the inhabitants of a town where they were to 
erect a church, containing such stipulations as, that 
a Lodge covered with tiles should be built for their 
accommodation, and that every laborer should be 
provided with a white apron of a peculiar kind of 
leather and gloves to shield the hands from stone 
and slime.” At all events, the picture we have is 
that of a little community or village of workmen, 
living in rude dwellings, with a Lodge room at the 
center adjoining a slowly rising cathedral — the 
Master busy with his plans and the care of his 
craft; Fellows shaping stones for walls, arches, or 
spires; Apprentices fetching tools or mortar, and 
when necessary, tending the sick, and performing 


1Gloves were more widely used in the olden times than now, 
and the practice of giving them as presents was common in medi- 
aeval times. Often, when the harvest was over, gloves were dis- 
tributed to the laborers who gathered it (History of Prices in Eng- 
land, Rogers), and richly embroidered gloves formed an offering 
gladly accepted by princes. Indeed, the bare hand was regarded 
as a symbol of hostility, and the gloved hand a token of peace and 
goodwill. For Masons, however, the white gloves and apron had 
meanings hardly guessed by others, and their symbolism remains to 
this day with its simple and eloquent appeal. (See chapter on “Ma- 
sonic Clothing and Regalia,” in Things a Freemason Should Know, 
by J. W. Crowe, an interesting article by Rylands, A. Q. C., vol v, 
and the delightful essay on “Gloves,” by Dr. Mackey, in his Sym- 
bolism of Freemasonry.) Not only the tools of the builder, but his 
clothing, had moral meaning. 


138 THE BUILDERS 


all offices of a similar nature. Always the Lodge 
was the center of interest and activity, a place of 
labor, of study, of devotion, as well as the common 
room for the social life of the order. Every morn- 
ing, as we learn from the Fabric Rolls of York Min- 
ster, began with devotion, followed by the directions 
of the Master for the work of the day, which no 
doubt included study of the laws of the art, plans of 
construction, and the mystical meaning of orna- 
ments and emblems. Only Masons were in attend- 
ance at such times, the Lodge being closed to all 
others, and guarded by a Tiler* against “the ap- 
proach of cowans’ and eavesdroppers.” ‘Thus the 


1 Tiler —like the word cable-tow—is a word peculiar to the 
language of Masonry, and means one who guards the Lodge to see 
that only Masons are within ear-shot. It probably derives from the 
Middle Ages when the makers of tiles for roofing were also of mi- 
gratory habits (History of Prices in England, Rogers), and accom- 
panied the Free-masons to perform their share of the work of cov- 
ering buildings. Some tiler was appointed to act as sentinel to keep 
off intruders, and hence, in course of time, the name of Tiler came 
to be applied to any Mason who guarded the Lodge. 

2 Much has been written of the derivation and meaning of the 
word cowan, some finding its origin in a Greek term meaning 
“dog.” (See “An Inquiry Concerning Cowans,” by D. Ramsay, Re- 
view of Freemasonry, vol. i.) But its origin is still to seek, unless 
we accept it as an old Scotch word of contempt (Dictionary of 
Scottish Language, Jamieson). Sir Walter Scott uses it as such in 
Rob Roy, “she doesna’ value a Cawmil mair as a cowan” (chap. 
xxix). Masons used the word to describe a “dry-diker, one who 
built without cement,” or a Mason without the word. Unfortunate- 
ly, we still have cowans in this sense— men who try to be Masons 


FELLOWCRAFTS 139 


work of each day was begun, moving forward 
amidst the din and litter of the hours, until the craft 
was called from labor to rest and refreshment; and 
thus a cathedral was uplifted as a monument to the 
Order, albeit the names of the builders are faded 
and lost. Employed for years on the same build- 
ing, and living together in the Lodge, it is not 
strange that Free-masons came to know and love 
one another, and to have a feeling of loyalty to their 
craft, unique, peculiar, and enduring. Traditions of 
fun and frolic, of song and feast and gala-day, have 
floated down to us, telling of a comradeship as joy- 
ous as it was genuine. If their life had hardship 
and vicissitude, it had also its grace and charm of 
friendship, of sympathy, service, and community of 
interest, and the joy that comes of devotion to a 
high and noble art. 

When a Mason wished to leave one Lodge and go 
elsewhere to work, as he was free to do when he de- 
sired, he had no difficulty in making himself known 


without using the cement of brotherly love. If only they could be 
kept out! Blackstone describes an eavesdropper as “a common nui- 
sance punishable by fine.” Legend says that the old-time Masons 
punished such prying persons, who sought to learn their signs and 
secrets, by holding them under the eaves until the water ran in at 
the neck and out at the heels. What penalty was inflicted in dry 
weather, we are not informed. At any rate, they had contempt for 
a man who tried to make use of the signs of the craft without know- 
ing its art and ethics. 


140 THE BUILDERS 


to the men of his craft by certain signs, grips, and 
words.* Such tokens of recognition were necessary 
to men who traveled afar in those uncertain days, 
especially when references or other means of iden- 
tification were ofttimes impossible. All that many 
people knew about the order was that its members 
had a code of secret signs, and that no Mason need 
be friendless or alone when other Masons were 
within sight or hearing; so that the very name of 
the craft came to stand for any mode of hidden rec- 
ognition. Steele, in the Tatler, speaks of a class of 
people who have “‘their signs and tokens like Free- 


1This subject is most fascinating. Even in primitive ages there 
seems to have been a kind of universal sign-language employed, at 
times, by all peoples. Among widely separated tribes the signs were 
very similar, owing, perhaps, to the fact that they were natural ges- 
tures of greeting, of warning, or of distress. There is intimation 
of this in the Bible, when the life of Ben-Hadad was saved by a 
sign given (I Kings, 20:30-35). Even among the North American 
Indians a sign-code of like sort was known (Jndian Masonry, R. C. 
Wright, chap iii). “Mr. Ellis, by means of his knowledge as a 
Master Mason, actually passed himself into the sacred part or ady- 
tum of one of the temples of India” (Anacalypsis, G. Higgins, vol. 
i, 767). See also the experience of Haskett Smith among the 
Druses, already referred to (A. Q. C., iv, 11). Kipling has a rol- 
licking story with the Masonic sign-code for a theme, entitled The 
Man Who Would be King, and his imagination is positively un- 
canny. If not a little of the old sign-language of the race lives to 
this day in Masonic Lodges, it is due not only to the exigencies of 
the craft, but also to the instinct of the order for the old, the uni- 
versal, the human; its genius for making use of all the ways and 
means whereby men may be brought to know and love and help one 
another. 


FELLOWCRAFTS 141 


masons.” ‘There were more than one of these signs 
and tokens, as we are more than once told — in the 
Harleian MS, for example, which speaks of “‘words 
and signs.” What they were may not be here dis- 
cussed, but it is safe to say that a Master Mason of 
the Middle Ages, were he to return from the land 
of shadows, could perhaps make himself known as 
such in a Fellowcraft Lodge of today. No doubt 
some things would puzzle him at first, but he would 
recognize the officers of the Lodge, its form, its 
emblems, its great altar Light, and its moral truth 
taught in symbols. Besides, he could tell us, if so 
minded, much that we should like to learn about the 
craft in the olden times, its hidden mysteries, the 
details of its rites, and the meaning of its symbols 
when the poetry of building was yet alive. 


Ill 


This brings us to one of the most hotly debated 
questions in Masonic history — the question as to 
the number and nature of the degrees made use of 
in the old craft lodges. Hardly any other subject 
has so deeply engaged the veteran archaeologists of 
the order, and while it ill becomes any one glibly to 
decide such an issue, it is at least permitted us, after 
studying all of value that has been written on both 
sides, to sum up what seems to be the truth arrived 


142 THE BUILDERS 


at... While such a thing as a written record of an 
ancient degree—aside from the Old Charges, 
which formed a part of the earliest rituals — is un- 
thinkable, we are not left altogether to the mercy 
of conjecture in a matter so important. Cesare 
Cantu tells us that the Comacine Masters “were 
called together in the Loggie by a grand-master to 
treat of affairs common to the order, to receive 
novices, and confer superior degrees on others.” * 
Evidence of a sort similar is abundant, but not a 
little confusion will be avoided if the following con- 
siderations be kept in mind: 

First, that during its purely operative period the 
ritual of Masonry was naturally less formal and 
ornate than it afterwards became, from the fact 
that its very life was a kind of ritual and its sym- 
bols were always visibly present in its labor. By 
the same token, as it ceased to be purely operative, 
and others not actually architects were admitted to 
its fellowship, of necessity its rites became more 


1 Once more it is a pleasure to refer to the transactions of the 
Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, whose essays and discussions 
of this issue, as of so many others, are the best survey of the whole 
question from all sides. The paper by J. W. Hughan arguing in 
behalf of only one degree in the old time lodges, and a like paper 
by G. W. Speth in behalf of two degrees, with the materials for the 
third, cover the field quite thoroughly and in full light of all the 
facts (A. Q. C., vol. x, 127; vol. xi, 47). As for the Third Degree, 
that will be considered further along. 

2 Storia di Como, vol. i, 440. 


FELLOWCRAFTS 143 


formal — “very formall,” as Dugdale said in. 1686," 
— portraying in ceremony what had long been pres- 
ent in its symbolism and practice. 

Second, that with the decline of the old religious 
art of building — for such it was in very truth — 
some of its symbolism lost its luster, its form sur- 
viving but its meaning obscured, if not entirely 
faded. Who knows, for example — even with the 
Klein essay on The Great Symbol * in hand — what 
Pythagoras meant by his lesser and greater Te- 
tractys? That they were more than mathematical 
theorems is plain, yet even Plutarch missed their 
meaning. In the same way, some of the emblems 
in our Lodges are veiled, or else wear meanings in- 
vented after the fact, in lieu of deeper meanings 
hidden, or but dimly discerned. Albeit, the great 
emblems still speak in truths simple and eloquent, 
and remain to refine, instruct, and exalt. 

Third, that when Masonry finally became a pure- 
ly speculative or symbolical fraternity, no longer an 
order of practical builders, its ceremonial inevitably 
became more elaborate and imposing —its old 
habit and custom, as well as its symbols and teach- 
ings, being enshrined in its ritual. More than this, 
knowing how “Time the white god makes all things 


1 Natural History of Wiltshire, by John Aubrey, written, but not 
published, in 1686. 
een. C.. Vol. Xx; 82. 


144 THE BUILDERS 


holy, and what is old becomes religion,” it is no 
wonder that its tradition became every year more 
authoritative; so that the tendency was not, as 
many have imagined, to add to its teaching, but to 
preserve and develop its rich deposit of symbolism, 
and to avoid any break with what had come down 
from the past. 

Keeping in mind this order of evolution in the 
history of Masonry, we may now state the facts, so 
far as they are known, as to its early degrees; divid- 
ing it into two periods, the Operative and the Specu- 
lative." An Apprentice in the olden days was “‘en- 
tered” as a novice of the craft, first, as a purely 
business proceeding, not unlike our modern inden- 
tures, or articles. Then, or shortly afterwards — 


1 Roughly speaking, the year 1600 may be taken as a date divid- 
ing the two periods. Addison, writing in the Spectator, March 1, 
1711, draws the following distinction between a speculative and an 
operative member of a trade or profession: “I live in the world 
rather as a spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by 
which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, 
merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical 
part of life.’ By a Speculative Mason, then, is meant a man who, 
though not an actual architect, sought and obtained membership 
among Free-masons. Such men, scholars and students, began to en- 
ter the order as early as 1600, if not earlier. If by Operative Mason 
is meant one who attached no moral meaning to his tools, there 
were none such in the olden time—all Masons, even those in the 
Guilds, using their tools as moral emblems in a way quite unknown 
to builders of our day. ’Tis a pity that this light of poetry has 
faded from our toil, and with it the joy of work. 


FELLOWCRAFTS 145 


probably at the annual Assembly — there was a 
ceremony of initiation making him a Mason — in- 
cluding an oath, the recital of the craft legend as re- 
corded in the Old Charges, instruction in moral 
conduct and deportment as a Mason, and the im- 
parting of certain secrets. At first this degree, al- 
though comprising secrets, does not seem to have 
been mystic at all, but a simple ceremony intended 
to impress upon the mind of the youth the high mor- 
al life required of him. Even Guild-masonry had 
such a rite of initiation, as Hallam remarks, and if 
we may trust the Findel version of the ceremony 
used among the German Stone-masons, it was very 
like the first degree as we now have it — though 
one has always the feeling that it was embellished 
in the light of later time.* 

So far there is no dispute, but the question is 
whether any other degree was known in the early 
lodges. Both the probabilities of the case, together 
with such facts as we have, indicate that there was 
another and higher degree. For, if all the secrets 
of the order were divulged to an Apprentice, he 
could, after working four years, and just when he 
was becoming valuable, run away, give himself out 
as a Fellow, and receive work and wages as such. 
If there was only one set of secrets, this deception 

1 History of Masonry, p. 66. 


146 THE BUILDERS 


might be practiced to his own profit and the injury 
of the craft — unless, indeed, we revise all our ideas 
held hitherto, and say that his initiation did not 
take place until he was out of his articles. This, 
however, would land us in worse difficulties later on. 
Knowing the fondness of the men of the Middle 
Ages for ceremony, it is hardly conceivable that the 
day of all days when an Apprentice, having worked 
for seven long years, acquired the status of a Fel- 
low, was allowed to go unmarked, least of all in an 
order of men to whom building was at once an art 
and an allegory. So that, not only the exigences of 
his occupation, but the importance of the day toa 
young man, and the spirit of the order, justify such 
a conclusion. 

Have we any evidence tending to confirm this in- — 
ference? Most certainly; so much so that it is not 
easy to interpret the hints given in the Old Charges 
upon any other theory. For one thing, in nearly all 
the MSS, from the Regius Poem down, we are told 
of two rooms or resorts, the Chamber and the Lodge 
— sometimes called the Bower and the Hall — and 
the Mason was charged to keep the “‘counsells”’ prop- 
er to each place. This would seem to imply that an 
Apprentice had access to the Chamber or Bower, 
but not to the Lodge itself —at least not at all 
times. It may be argued that the “other counsells” 


FELLOWCRAFTS 147 


referred to were merely technical secrets, but that is 
to give the case away, since they were secrets held 
and communicated as such. By natural process, as 
the order declined and actual building ceased, its 
techmical secrets became ritual secrets, though they 
must always have had symbolical meanings. Fur- 
ther, while we have record of only one oath — which 
_does not mean that there was only one — signs, 
tokens, and words are nearly always spoken of in 
the plural; and if the secrets of a Fellowcraft were 
purely technical — which some of us do not believe 
— they were at least accompanied and protected by 
certain signs, tokens, and passwords. From this 
it is clear that the advent of an Apprentice into the 
ranks of a Fellow was in fact a degree, or contained 
the essentials of a degree, including a separate set 
of signs and secrets. 

When we pass to the second period, and men of 
wealth and learning who were not actual architects 
began to enter the order — whether as patrons of 
the art or as students and mystics attracted by 
its symbolism — other evidences of change appear. 
They, of course, were not required to serve a seven 
year apprenticeship, and they would naturally be 
Fellows, not Masters, because they were in no sense 
masters of the craft. Were these Fellows made 
acquainted with the secrets of an Apprentice? If 


148 THE BUILDERS 


so, then the two degrees were either conferred in 
one evening, or else — what seems to have been the 
fact — they were welded into one; since we hear of 
men being made Masons in a single evening.’ Cus- 
toms differed, no doubt, in different Lodges, some of 
which were chiefly operative, or made up of men 
who had been working Masons, with only a sprink- 
ling of men not workmen who had been admitted; 
while others were purely symbolical Lodges as far 
back as 1645. Naturally in Lodges of the first kind 
the two degrees were kept separate, and in the sec- 
ond they were merged — the one degree becoming 
all the while more elaborate. Gradually the men 
who had been Operative Masons became fewer in 
the Lodges — chiefly those of higher position, such 
as master builders, architects, and so on — until the 
order became a purely speculative fraternity, hav- 
ing no longer any trade object in view. 

Not only so, but throughout this period of transi- 
tion, and even earlier, we hear intimations of “the 
Master’s Part,” and those hints increase in number 
as the office of Master of the Work lost its practical 
aspect after the cathedral-building period. What 
was the Master’s Part? Unfortunately, while the 
number of degrees may be indicated, their nature 
and details cannot be discussed without grave indis- 


1For a single example, the Diary of Elias Ashmole, under date 
of 1646. 


FELLOWCRAFTS 149 


cretion ; but nothing is plainer than that we need not 
go outside Masonry ttself to find the materials out of 
which all three degrees, as they now exist, were de- 
veloped. Even the French Companionage, or Sons 
of Solomon, had the legend of the Third Degree 
long before 1717, when some imagine it to have been 
invented. If little or no mention of it is found 
among English Masons before that date, that is no 
reason for thinking that it was unknown. Not un- 
til rS41 was 1t known to have been a secret of the 
Companionage in France, so deeply and carefully 
was 1t hidden.” Where so much is dim one may 
not be dogmatic, but what seems to have taken 
place in 1717 was, not the addition of a third de- 


1 Time out of mind it has been the habit of writers, both within 
the order and without, to treat Masonry as though it were a kind 
of agglomeration of archaic remains and platitudinous moralizings, 
made up of the heel-taps of Operative legend and the fag-ends of 
Occult lore. Far from it! If this were the fact the present writer 
would be the first to admit it, but it is not the fact. Instead, the 
idea that an order so noble, so heroic in its history, so rich in sym- 
bolism, so skilfully adjusted, and with so many traces of remote 
antiquity, was the creation of pious fraud, or else of an ingenious 
conviviality, passes the bounds of credulity and enters the domain 
of the absurd. This fact will be further emphasized in the chapter 
following, to which those are respectfully referred who go every- 
where else, except to Masonry itself, to learn what Masonry is and 
how it came to be. 

2Tivre du Compagnonnage, by Agricol Perdiguier, 1841. George 
Sand’s novel, Le Compagnon du Tour de France, was published the 
same year. See full account of this order in Gould, History of Ma- 
sonry, vol. i, chap. v. 


150 THE BUILDERS 


gree made out of whole cloth, but the conversion of 
two degrees into three. 

That is to say, Masonry is too great an institution 
to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, 
but was a slow evolution through long time, unfold- — 
ing its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one 
of its own cathedrals upon which one generation of 
builders wrought.and vanished, and another fol- 
lowed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, 
of decline and revival, the order itself became a 
temple of Freedom and Fraternity — its history a 
disclosure of its innermost soul in the natural pro- 
cess of its transition from actual architecture to its 
“more noble and glorious purpose.” For, since 
what was evolved from Masonry must always have 
been involved in it — not something alien added to 
it from extraneous sources, as some never tire of 
trying to show — we need not go outside the order 
itself to learn what Masonry is, certainly not to dis- 
cover its motif and its genius; its later and more 
elaborate form being only an expansion and expo- 
sition of its inherent nature and teaching. Upon 
this fact the present study insists with all emphasis, 
as over against those who go hunting in every odd 
nook and corner to find whence Masonry came, and 
where it got its symbols and degrees. 


} iO « } r 
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ACCEPTED MASONS 


The System, as taught in the regular Lovcrs, 
may have some Redundancies or Defeets, occa- 
sion'd by the Ignorance or Indolence of the old 
members. And indeed, considering through 
what Obscurity and Darkness the Mystery has 
been deliverd down; the many Centuries it has 
survived; the many Countries and Languages, 
and SEcts and Partixs it has run through; we 
are rather to wonder that 1t ever arrived to the 
present Age, without more Imperfection. It has 
run long in muddy Streams, and as it were, un- 
der Ground. But notwithstanding the great 
Rust tt may have contracted, there is much of 
the oLD FasricK remaining: the essential Pillars 
of the Building may be discov’d through the 
Rubbish, tho’ the Superstructure be overrun with 
Moss and Ivy, and the Stones, by Length of 
Time, be disjointed. And therefore, as the Bust 
of an op Hero is of great Value among the 
Curious, tho’ it has lost an Eye, the Nose or the 
Right Hand; so Masonry with all its Blemishes 
and Misfortunes, instead of appearing ridiculous, 
ought to be receiv’'d with some Candor and Es- 
teem, from a Veneration of its ANTIQUITY. 

— Defence of Masonry, 1730 


CHAPTER III 


Accepted Masons 
I 


HATEVER may be dim in the history of 

Freemasonry, and in the nature of things 
much must remain hidden, its symbolism may be 
traced in unbroken succession through the cen- 
turies; and its symbolism is its soul. So much is 
this true, that it may almost be said that had the 
order ceased to exist in the period when it was at its 
height, its symbolism would have survived and de- 
veloped, so deeply was it wrought into the mind of 
mankind. When, at last, the craft finished its labors 
and laid down its tools, its symbols, having served 
the faith of the worker, became a language for the 
thoughts of the thinker. 

Few realize the service of the science of numbers 
to the faith of man in the morning of the world, 
when he sought to find some kind of key to the 
mighty maze of things. Living amidst change and 
seeming chance, he found in the laws of numbers a 
path by which to escape the awful sense of life as a 
series of accidents in the hands of a capricious 


154 THE BUILDERS 


Power; and, when we think of it, his insight was 
not invalid. “All things are in numbers,” said the 
wise Pythagoras; “the world is a living arithmetic 
in its development — a realized geometry in its re- 
pose.” Nature is a realm of numbers; crystals are 
solid geometry. Music, of all arts the most divine 
and exalting, moves with measured step, using geo- 
metrical figures, and cannot free itself from num- 
bers without dying away into discord. Surely it is 
not strange that a science whereby men obtained 
such glimpses of the unity and order of the world 
should be hallowed among them, imparting its form 
to their faith." Having revealed so much, mathe- 
matics came to wear mystical meanings in a way 
quite alien to our prosaic habit of thinking — faith 
in our day having betaken itself to other symbols. 
Equally so was it with the art of building —a 
living allegory in which man imitated in miniature 


1 There is a beautiful lecture on the moral meaning of Geometry 
by Dr. Hutchinson, in The Spirit of Masonry—one of the oldest, 
as it is one of the noblest, books in our Masonic literature. Plu- 
tarch reports Plato as saying, “God is always geometrizing” (Dtog. 
Laert., iv, 2). Elsewhere Plato remarks that “Geometry rightly 
treated is the knowledge of the Eternal’ (Republic, 527b), and 
over the porch of his Academy at Athens he wrote the words, “Let 
no one who is ignorant of Geometry enter my doors.” So Aristotle 
and all the ancient thinkers, whether in Egypt or India. Pythag- 
oras, Proclus tells us, was concerned only with number and mag- 
nitude: number absolute, in arithmetic; number applied, in music; 
and so forth—whereof we read in the Old Charges (see “The 
Great Symbol,” by Klein, 4. Q. C., x, 82). 


ACCEPTED MASONS iss 


the world-temple, and sought by every device to dis- 
cover the secret of its stability. Already we have 
shown how, from earliest times, the simple symbols 
of the builder became a part of the very life of hu- 
manity, giving shape to its thought, its faith, its 
dream. Hardly a language but bears their impress, 
as when we speak of a Rude or Polished mind, of an 
Upright man who is a Pillar of society, of the Level 
of equality, or the Golden Rule by which we would 
Square our actions. They are so natural, so inevit- 
able, and so eloquent withal, that we use them with- 
out knowing it. Sages have always been called 
Builders, and it was no idle fancy when Plato and 
Pythagoras used imagery drawn from the art of 
building to utter their highest thought. Every- 
where in literature, philosophy, and life it is so, and 
naturally so. Shakespeare speaks of “square-men,” 
and when Spenser would build in stately lines the 
Castle of Temperance, he makes use of the Square, 
Circle, and Triangle: * 
The frame thereof seem’d partly circulaire 
And part triangular: O work divine! 
Those two the first and last proportions are; 
The one imperfect, mortal, feminine. 


The other immortal, perfect, masculine, 
And twixt them both a quadrate was the base, 


1 Faerie Queene, bk. ii, canto ix, 22. 


156 THE BUILDERS 


Proportion’d equally by seven and nine; 
Nine was the circle set in heaven’s place 
All which compacted made a goodly diapase. 


During the Middle Ages, as we know, men rev- 
elled in symbolism, often of the most recondite 
kind, and the emblems of Masonry are to be found 
all through the literature, art, and thought of that 
time. Not only on cathedrals, tombs, and monu- 
ments, where we should expect to come upon them, 
but in the designs and decorations of dwellings, on 
vases, pottery, and trinkets, in the water-marks used 
by paper-makers and printers, and even as initial let- 
ters in books — everywhere one finds the old, famil- 
iar emblems.* Square, Rule, Plumb-line, the per- 
fect Ashlar, the two Pillars, the Circle within the 
parallel lines, the Point within the Circle, the Com- 
passes, the Winding Staircase, the numbers Three, 
Five, Seven, Nine, the double Triangle — these and 
other such symbols were used alike by Hebrew 
Kabbalists and Rosicrucian Mystics. Indeed, so 
abundant is the evidence —if the matter were in 
dispute and needed proof — especially after the re- 
vival of symbolism under Albertus Magnus in 1249, 


1 Tost Language of Symbolism, by Bayley, also A New Light on 
the Renaissance, by the same author; Architecture of the Renais- 
sance in England, by J. A. Gotch; and “Notes on Some Masonic 
Symbols,” by W. H. Rylands, A. Q. C., viii, 84. Indeed, the litera- 
ture is as prolific as the facts. 


ACCEPTED MASONS 157 


that a whole book might be filled with it. Typical 
are the lines left by a poet who, writing in 1623, 
sings of God as the great Logician whom the con- 
clusion never fails, and whose counsel rules without 
command: * 

Therefore can none foresee his end 

Unless on God is built his hope. 

And if we here below would learn 

By Compass, Needle, Square, and Plumb, 

We never must o’erlook the mete 

Wherewith our God hath measur’d us. 


For all that, there are those who never weary of 
trying to find where, in the misty mid-region of con- 
jecture, the Masons got their immemorial emblems. 
One would think, after reading their endless essays, 
that the symbols of Masonry were loved and pre- 
served by all the world—e-srcept by the Masons 
themselves. Often these writers imply, if they do 
not actually assert, that our order begged, borrow- 
ed, or cribbed its emblems from Kabbalists or Rosi- 
crucians, whereas the truth is exactly the other way 
round—those impalpable fraternities, whose vague, 
fantastic thought was always seeking a local habi- 
tation and a body, making use of the symbols of 
Masonry the better to reach the minds of men. Why 


1J. V. Andreae, Ehreneich Hohenfelder von Aister Haimb. A 
verbatim translation of the second line quoted would read, “Unless 
in God he has his building.” 


158 THE BUILDERS 


all this unnecessary mystery — not to say mystifica- 
tion — when the facts are so plain, written in rec- 
ords and carved in stone? While Kabbalists were 
contriving their curious cosmogonies, the Masons 
went about their work, leaving record of their sym- 
bols in deeds, not in creeds, albeit holding always to 
their simple faith, and hope, and duty —as in the 
lines left on an old brass Square, found in an an- 
cient bridge near Limerick, bearing date of 1517: 


Strive to live with love and care 
Upon the Level, by the Square. 


Some of our Masonic writers *— more than one 
likes to admit — have erred by confusing Freema- 
sonry with Guild-masonry, to the discredit of the 


1 When, for example, Albert Pike, in his letter, “Touching Ma- 
sonic Symbolism,” speaks of the “poor, rude, unlettered, unculti- 
vated working Stone-masons,” who attended the Assemblies, he is ob- 
viously confounding Free-masons with the rough Stone-masons of 
the Guilds. Over against these words, read a brilliant article in 
the Contemporary Review, October, 1913, by L. M. Phillips, en- 
titled, “The Two Ways of Building,’ showing how the Free-masons, 
instead of working under architects outside the order, chose the 
finer minds among them as leaders and created the different styles 
of architecture in Europe. “Such,” he adds, “was the high limit of 
talent and intelligence which the creative spirit fostered among 
workmen. . . The entire body being trained and educated in the 
same principles and ideas, the most backward and inefficient, as 
they worked at the vaults which their own skillful brethren had 
planned, might feel the glow of satisfaction arising from the con- 
scious realization of their own aspirations. Thus the whole body 
of constructive knowledge. maintained its unity. . . Thus it was 
by free associations of workmen training their own leaders that 


ACCEPTED MASONS 159 


former. Even Oliver once concluded that the secrets 
of the working Masons of the Middle Ages were 
none other than the laws of Geometry — hence the 
letter G; forgetting, it would seem, that Geometry 
had mystical meanings for them long since lost_to 
us. As well say that the philosophy of Pythagoras 
was repeating the Multiplication Table! Albert 
Pike held that we are “not warranted in assuming 
that, among Masons generally —in the body of 
Masonry —the symbolism of Freemasonry is of 
earlier date then 1717.” * Surely that istoerr. If 
we had only the Mason’s Marks that have come 
down to us, nothing else would be needed to prove 
it an error. Of course, for deeper minds all em- 
blems have deeper meanings, and there may have 
been many Masons who did not fathom the sym- 
bolism of the order. No more do we; but the sym- 
bolism itself, of hoar antiquity, was certainly the 
common inheritance and treasure of the working 
Masons of the Lodges in England and Scotland be- 
fore, indeed centuries before, the year 1717. 


the great Gothic edifices of the medieval ages were construct- 
ed. . . A style so imaginative and so spiritual might almost be the 
dream of a poet or the vision of a saint. Really it is the creation 
of the sweat and labor of workingmen, and every iota of the bold- 
ness, dexterity and knowledge which it embodies was drawn out 
of the practical experience and experiments of manual labor.” This 
describes the Comacine Masters, but not the poor, rude, unlettered 
Stone-masons whom Pike had in mind. 
1Letter “Touching Masonic Symbolism.” 


160 THE BUILDERS 


I] 


Therefore it is not strange that men of note and 


learning, attracted by the wealth of symbolism in - 


Masonry, as well as by its spirit of fraternity — 
perhaps, also, by its secrecy — began at an early 
date to ask to be accepted as members of the order: 
hence Accepted Masons." How far back the cus- 
tom of admitting such men to the Lodges goes is 
not clear, but hints of it are discernible in the oldest 
documents of the order; and this whether or no we 
accept as historical the membership of Prince Ed- 
win in the tenth century, of whom the Regius Poem 
says, 
Ot speculatyfe he was a master. 

This may only mean that he was amply skilled in 
the knowledge, as well as the practice, of the art, 
although, as Gould points out, the Regius MS con- 
tains intimations of thoughts above the heads of 
many to whom it was read.* Similar traces of Ac- 
cepted Masons are found in the Cooke MS, com- 
piled in 1400 or earlier. Hope suggests * that the 


1 Some Lodges, however, would never admit such members. As 
late as April 24, 1786, two brothers were proposed as members of 
Domatic Lodge, No. 177, London, and were rejected because they 
were not Operative Masons (History Lion and Lamb Lodge, 192, 
London, by Abbott). 

2“On the Antiquity of Masonic Symbolism,” 4. Q. C., iii, 7. 

3 Historical Essay on Architecture, chap. xxi. 


\ 


ACCEPTED MASONS LOI 


earliest members of this class were ecclesiastics 
who wished to study to be architects and designers, 
so as to direct the erection of their own churches; 
the more so, since the order had “‘so high and sacred 
a destination, was so entirely exempt from all local, 
civil jurisdiction,’ and enjoyed the sanction and pro- 
tection of the Church. Later, when the order was 
in disfavor with the Church, men of another sort — 
scholars, mystics, and lovers of liberty — sought its 
degrees. 

At any rate, the custom began early and contin- 
ued through the years, until Accepted Masons were 
in the majority. Noblemen, gentlemen, and schol- 
ars entered the order as Speculative Masons, and 
held office as such in the old Lodges, the first name 
recorded in actual minutes being John Boswell, who 
was present as a member of the Lodge of Edin- 
burgh in 1600. Of the forty-nine names on the roll 
of the Lodge of Aberdeen in 1670, thirty-nine were 
Accepted Masons not in any way connected with 
the building trade. In England the earliest refer- 
ence to the initiation of a Speculative Mason, in 
Lodge minutes, is of the year 1641. On the 2oth of 
May that year, Robert Moray, ‘General Quarter- 
master of the Armie off Scottland,” as the record 
runs, was initiated at Newcastle by members of the 
“Lodge of Edinburgh,” who were with the Scottish 


162 THE BUILDERS 


Army. A still more famous example was that of 
Ashmole, whereof we read in the Memoirs of the 
Life of that Learned Antiquary, Elias Ashmole, 
Drawn up by Himself by Way of Diary, published 
in 1717, which contains two entries as follows, the 
first dated in 1646: 

Octob 16.4 Hor. 30 Minutes post merid. I was made 
a.Freemason at Warrington in Lancashire, with Colonel 
Henry Wainwaring of Kartichain in Cheshire; the names 
of those that were there at the Lodge, Mr. Richard 
Panket Warden, Mr. James Collier, Mr. Richard San- 
key, Henry Littler, John Ellam, Richard Ellam and Hugh 
Brewer. 


Such is the record, italics and all; and it has been 
shown, by hunting up the wills of the men present, 
that the members of the Warrington Lodge in 1646 
were, nearly all of them — every one in fact, so far 
as is known — Accepted Masons. Thirty-five years 
pass before we discover the only other Masonic en- 
tries in the Diary, dated March, 1682, which read 
as follows: 

About 5 p. m. I received a Summons to appear at a 
Lodge to be held the next day, at Masons Hall, London. 
Accordingly I went, and about Noone were admitted into 
the Fellowship of Free Masons, Sir. William Wilson, 
Knight, Capt. Richard Borthwick, Mr. Will. Woodman, 
Mr. Wm. Grey, M. Samuell Taylor and Mr. William 
Wise. 


ACCEPTED MASONS 163 


I was the Senior Fellow among them (it being 35 
years since I was admitted). There were present beside 
myselfe the Fellowes afternamed: [Then follows a list 
of names which conveys no information.] Wee all 
dyned at the halfe moone Taverne in Cheapside at a 
Noble Dinner prepared at the charge of the new-accept- 
ed Masons. 


Space is given to those entries, not because they 
are very important, but because Ragon and others 
have actually held that Ashmole made Masonry — 
as if any one man made Masonry! ’Tis surely 
strange, if this be true, that only two entries in his 
Diary refer to the order; but that does not discon- 
cert the theorists who are so wedded to their idols 
as to have scant regard for facts. No, the circum- 
stance that Ashmole was a Rosicrucian, an Alche- 
mist, a delver into occult lore, is enough, the absence 
of any allusion to him thereafter only serving to 
confirm the fancy —the theory being that a few 
adepts, seeing Masonry about to crumble and decay, 
seized it, introduced their symbols into it, making it 
the mouthpiece of their high, albeit hidden, teach- 
ing. How fascinating! and yet how baseless in fact! 
There is no evidence that a Rosicrucian fraternity 
existed — save on paper, having been woven of a 
series of romances written as early as 1616, and as- 
cribed to Andrea — until a later time; and even 
when it did take form, it was quite distinct from 


164 THE BUILDERS 


Masonry. Occultism, to be sure, is elusive, coming 
we know not whence, and hovering like a mist trail- 
ing over the hills. Still, we ought to be able to find 
in Masonry some trace of Rosicrucian influence, 
some hint of the lofty wisdom it is said to have add- 
ed to the order; but no one has yet done so. Did 
all that high, Hermetic mysticism evaporate entire- 
ly, leaving not a wraith behind, going as myste- 
riously as it came to that far place which no mortal 
may explorer * 

Howbeit, the fact to be noted is that, thus early 
— and earlier, for the Lodge had been in existence 
some time when Ashmole was initiated — the War- 
rington Lodge was made up of Accepted Masons. 
Of the ten men present in the London Lodge, men- 


1Those who wish to pursue this Quixotic quest will find the 
literature abundant and very interesting. For example, such essays 
as that by F. W. Brockbank in Manchester Association for Re- 
search, vol. i, 1909-10; and another by A. F. A. Woodford, A. Q. 
C., i, 28. Better still is the Real History of the Rosicrucians, by 
Waite (chap. xv), and for a complete and final explosion of all 
such fancies we have the great chapter in Gould’s History of Ma- 
sonry (vol. ii, chap. xiii). It seems a pity that so much time and 
labor and learning had to be expended on theories so fragile, but 
it was necessary; and no man was better fitted for the study than 
Gould. Perhaps the present writer is unkind, or at least impatient; 
if so he humbly begs forgiveness; but after reading tomes of con- 
jecture about the alleged Rosicrucian origin of Masonry, he is 
weary of the wide-eyed wonder of mystery-mongers about things 
that never were, and which would be of no value if they had been. 
(Read The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, or Christian Occult 
Science, by Max Heindel, and be instructed in matters whereof no 
mortal knoweth.) 


ACCEPTED MASONS 165 


tioned in the second entry in the Diary, Ashmole 
was the senior, but he was not a member of the Ma- 
sons’ Company, though the other nine were, and 
also two of the neophytes. No doubt this is the 
Lodge which Conder, the historian of the Company, 
has traced back to 1620, “and were the books of 
the Company prior to that date in existence, we 
should no doubt be able to trace the custom of re- 
ceiving accepted members back to pre-reformation 
times.” * From an entry in the books of the Com- 
pany, dated 1665, it appears that 
There was hanging up in the Hall a list of the Accept- 
ed Masons enclosed in a “faire frame, with a lock and 
key.” Why was this? No doubt the Accepted Masons, 
or those who were initiated into the esoteric aspect of the 
Company, did not include the whole Company, and this 
was a list of the “enlightened ones,’ whose names were 
thus honored and kept on record, probably long after 
their decease. . . This we cannot say for certain, but we 
can say that as early as 1620, and inferentially very much 
earlier, there were certain members of the Masons’ Com- 
pany and others who met from time to time to form a 
Lodge for the purpose of Speculative Masonry.’ 


Conder also mentions a copy of the Old Charges, 
or Gothic Constitutions, in the chest of the London 
Masons’ Company, known as The Book of the Con- 


1The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masons, by Edward Con- 
der. 
2 Tbid., Introduction. 


166 THE BUILDERS 


stitutions of the Accepted Masons; and this he iden- 
tifies with the Regius MS. Another witness during 
this period is Randle Holme, of Chester, whose ref- 
erences to the Craft in his Acadamie Armory, 1688, 
are of great value, for that he writes “as a mem- 
ber of that society called Free-masons.” The Har- 
letan MS is in his handwriting, and on the next leaf 
there is a remarkable list of twenty-six names, in- 
cluding his own. It is the only list of the kind known 
in England, and a careful examination of all the 
sources of information relative to the Chester men 
shows that nearly all of them were Accepted Ma- 
sons. Later on we come to the Natural History of 
Staffordshire, by Dr. Plott, 1686, in which, though 
in an unfriendly manner, we are told many things 
about Craft usages and regulations of that day. 
Lodges had to be formed of at least five members to 
make a quorum, gloves were presented to candi- 
dates, and a banquet following initiations was a 
custom. He states that there were several signs 
and passwords by which the members were able “to 
be known to one another all over the nation,” his 
faith in their effectiveness surpassing that of the 
most credulous in our day. 

Still another striking record is found in The Nat- 
ural History of Wiltshire, by John Aubrey, the 
MS of which in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is 


ACCEPTED MASONS 167 


dated 1686; and on the reverse side of folio 72 of 
this MS is the following note by Aubrey: “This day 
[May 18, 1681] is a great convention at St. Pauls 
Church of the fraternity, of the free [then he cross- 
ed out the word Free and inserted Accepted] Ma- 
sons; where Sir Christopher Wren is to be adopted 
a Brother: and Sir Henry Goodric of ye Tower and 
divers others.”* From which we may infer that 
there were Assemblies before 1717, and that they 
were of sufficient importance to be known to a non- 
Mason. Other evidence might be adduced, but this 
1s enough to show that Speculative Masonry, so far 
from being a novelty, was very old at the time when 
many suppose it was invented. With the great fire 


1 Whether Sir Christopher Wren was ever Grand Master, as 
tradition affirms, is open to debate, and some even doubt his mem- 
bership in the order (Gould, History of Masonry). Unfortunately, 
he has left no record, and the Parentalia, written by his son, helps 
us very little, containing nothing more than his theory that the or- 
der began with Gothic architecture. Ashmole, if we may trust his 
friend, Dr. Knipe, had planned to write a History of Masonry re- 
futing the theory of Wren that Freemasonry took its rise from a 
Bull granted by the Pope, in the reign of Henry III, to some Italian 
architects, holding, and rightly so, that the Bull “was comfirmatory 
only, and did not by any means create our fraternity, or even estab- 
lish it in this kingdom” (Life of Ashmole, by Campbell). This 
item makes still more absurd the idea that Ashmole himself created 
Masonry, whereas he was only a student of its antiquities. Wren was 
probably never an Operative Mason — though an architect — but’ he 
seems to have become an Accepted member of the fraternity in his 
last years, since his neglect of the order, due to his age, is given as 
a reason for the organization of the first Grand Lodge. 


168 THE BUILDERS 


of London, in 1666, there came a renewed interest 
in Masonry, many who had abandoned it flocking 
to the capital to rebuild the city and especially the 
Cathedral of St. Paul. Old Lodges were revived, 
new ones were formed, and an effort was made to 
renew the old annual, or quarterly, Assemblies, 
while at the same time Accepted Masons increased 
both in numbers and in zeal. 

Now the crux of the whole matter as regards Ac- 
cepted Masons lies in the answer to such questions 
as these: Why did soldiers, scholars, antiquarians, 
clergymen, lawyers, and even members of the no- 
bility ask to be accepted as members of the order of 
Free-masons? Wherefore their interest in the or- 
der at all? What attracted them to it as far back 
as 1600, and earlier? What held them with in- 
creasing power and an ever-deepening interest? 
Why did they continue to enter the Lodges until 
they had the rule of them? There must have been 
something more in their motive than a simple de- 
sire for association, for they had their clubs, so- 
cieties, and learned fellowships. Still less could a 
mere curiosity to learn certain signs and passwords 
have held such men for long, even in an age of. 
quaint conceits in the matter of association and 
when architecture was affected as a fad.. No, there 
is only one explanation: that these men saw in 


ACCEPTED MASONS 169 


Masonry a deposit of the high and simple wisdom of 
old, preserved in tradition and taught in symbols — 
little understood, it may be, by many members of 
the order —and this it was that they sought to 
bring to light, turning history into allegory and 
legend into drama, and making it a teacher of wise 
and beautiful truth, 


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GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 


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The doctrines of Masonry are the most beauti- 
ful that it is possible to imagine. They breathe 
the simplicity of the earliest ages animated by 
the love of a martyred God. That word which 
the Puritans translated Cuarity, but which is 
really Love, 1s the key-stone which supports the 
entire edifice of this mystic science. Love one 
another, teach one another, help one another. 
That is all our doctrine, all our science, all our 
law. We have no narrow-minded prejudices; 
we do not debar from our society this sect or 
that sect; 1t 1s sufficient for us that a man wor- 
ships God, no matter under what name or in 
what manner. Ah! rail against us bigoted and 
ignorant men, if you will. Those who listen to 
the truths which Masonry inculcates can readily 
forgive you. It 1s impossible to be a good 
Mason without being a good man, 

— Winwoop Reape, The Veil of Isis 


CHAPTER IV 


Grand Lodge of England 


HILE praying in a little chapel one day, 

Francis of Assisi was exhorted by an old 
Byzantine crucifix: “Go now, and rebuild my 
Church, which is falling into ruins.” In sheer loyal- 
ty he had a lamp placed; then he saw his task in a 
larger way, and an artist has painted him carrying 
stones and mortar. Finally there burst upon him 
the full import of the allocution — that he himself 
was to be the corner-stone of a renewed and puri- 
fied Church. Purse and prestige he flung to the 
winds, and went along the highways of Umbria call- 
ing men back from the rot of luxury to the ways of 
purity, pity, and gladness, his life at once a poem 
and a power, his faith a vision of the world as love 
and comradeship. 

That is a perfect parable of the history of Ma- 
sonry. Of old the working Masons built the great 
cathedrals, and we have seen them not only carry- 
ing stones, but drawing triangles, squares, and cir- 
cles in such a manner as to show that they assigned 


174 THE BUILDERS 


to those figures high mystical meanings. But the 
real Home of the Soul cannot be built of brick and 
stone; it is a house not made with hands. Slowly it 
rises, fashioned of the thoughts, hopes, prayers, 
dreams, and righteous acts of devout and free 
men; built of their hunger for truth, their love of 
God, and their loyalty to one another. There came 
a day when the Masons, laying aside their stones, 
became workmen of another kind, not less builders 
than before, but using truths for tools and dramas 
for designs, uplifting such a temple as Watts 
dreamed of decorating with his visions of the au- 
gust allegory of the evolution of man. 


I 


From every point of view, the organization of the 
Grand Lodge of England, in 1717, was a significant 
and far-reaching event. Not only did it divide the 
story of Masonry into before and after, giving a 
new date from which to reckon, but it was a way- 
mark in the intellectual and spiritual history of 
mankind. One has only to study that first Grand 
Lodge, the influences surrounding it, the men who 
composed it, the Constitutions adopted, and its 
spirit and purpose, to see that it was the beginning 
of a movement of profound meaning. When we see 
it in the setting of its age—as revealed, for ex- 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 175 


ample, in the Journals of Fox and Wesley, which 
from being religious time-tables broadened into de- 
tailed panoramic pictures of the period before, and 
that following, the Grand Lodge — the Assembly 
on 1717 becomes the more remarkable. Against 
such a background, when religion and morals 
seemed to reach the nadir of degredation, the men 
of that Assembly stand out as prophets of liberty of 
faith and righteousness of life.* 

Some imagination is needed to realize the moral 
declension of that time, as it is portrayed — to use 
a single example — in the sermon by the Bishop of 
Litchfield before the Society for the Reformation of 
Manners, in 1724. Lewdness, drunkenness, and de- 
generacy, he said, were well nigh universal, no class 
being free from the infection. Murders were com- 
mon and foul, wanton and obscene books found so 
good a market as to encourage the publishing of 
them. Immorality of every kind was so hardened 
as to be defended, yes, justified on principle. The 


1We should not forget that noble dynasty of large and liberal 
souls in the seventeenth century — John Hales, Chillingsworth, Which- 
cote, John Smith, Henry More, Jeremy Taylor — whose Liberty of 
Prophesying set the principle of toleration to stately strains of elo- 
quence — Sir Thomas Browne, and Richard Baxter; saints, every 
one of them, finely-poised, sweet-tempered, repelled from all ex- 
tremes alike, and walking the middle path of wisdom and charity. 
Milton, too, taught tolerance in a bigoted and bitter age (see Seven- 
teenth Century Men of Latitude, E. A. George). 


O THE BUILDERS 


NI 


T 
a 


rich were debauched and indifferent; the poor were 
as miserable in their labor as they were coarse and 
cruel in their sport. Writing in 1713, Bishop Bur- 
net said that those who came to be ordained as 
clergymen were “ignorant to a degree not to be 
comprehended by those who are not obliged to know 
it.” Religion seemed dying or dead, and to mention 
the word provoked a laugh. Wesley, then only a 
lad, had not yet come with his magnificent and 
cleansing evangel. Empty formalism on one side, a 
dead polemical dogmatism on the other, bigotry, 
bitterness, intolerance, and interminable feud every- 
where, no wonder Bishop Butler sat oppressed in 
his castle with hardly a hope surviving. 

As for Masonry, it had fallen far and fallen low 
betimes, but with the revival following the great 
fire of London, in 1666, it had taken on new life and 
a bolder spirit, and was passing through a transi- 
tion — or, rather, a transfiguration! For, when we 
compare the Masonry of, say, 1688 with that of 
1723, we discover that much more than a revival 
had come to pass. Set the instructions of the Old 
Charges —not all of them, however, for even in 
earliest times some of them escaped the stamp of 
the Church *— in respect of religion alongside the 


1For instance the Cooke MS, next to the oldest of all, as well 
as the W. Watson and York No. 4 MSS. It is rather surprising, 
in view of the supremacy of the Church in those times, to find such 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 177 


same article in the Constitutions of 1723, and the 
contrast is amazing. The old charge read: ‘The 
first charge is this, that you be true to God and 
Holy Church and use no error or heresy.”’ Hear 
now the charge in 1723: 


A Mason is obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral 
law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never 
be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine. But 
though in ancient times Masons were charged im every 
country to be of the religion of that country or nation, 
whatever it was, yet 1t 1s now thought more expedient 
only to oblige them to that religion in which all men 
agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves: 
that is, to be Good men and True, or Men of Honor and 
Honesty, by whatever Denomination or Persuasion they 
may be distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the 
Centre of Union and the Means of conciliating true 
Friendship among persons that must have remained at a 
perpetual distance. 


If that statement had been written yesterday, it 
would be remarkable enough. But when we con- 
sider that it was set forth in 1723, amidst bitter sec- 
tarian rancor and intolerance unimaginable, it rises 
up as forever memorable in the history of men! The 
man who wrote that document, did we know his 


evidence of what Dr. Mackey called the chief mission of primitive 
Masonry —the preservation of belief in the unity of God. These 
MSS did not succumb to the theology of the Church, and their in- 
vocations remind us more of the God of Isaiah than of the decrees 
of the Council of Nicza. 


178 THE BUILDERS 


name, is entitled to be held till the end of time in the 
grateful and venerative memory of his race. The 
temper of the times was all for relentless partisan- 
ship, both in religion and in politics. The alterna- 
tive offered in religion was an ecclesiastical tyranny, 
allowing a certain liberty of belief, or a doctrinal 
tyranny, allowing a slight liberty of worship; a sad 
choice in truth. It is, then, to the everlasting honor 
of the century, that, in the midst of its clashing ex- 
tremes, the Masons appeared with heads unbowed, 
abjuring both tyrannies and championing both lib- 
erties." Ecclesiastically and doctrinally they stood 
in the open, while Romanist and Protestant, Angli- 
can and Puritan, Calvinist and Arminian waged 
bitter war, filling the air with angry maledictions. 
These men of latitude in a cramped age felt pent 
up alike by narrowness of ritual and by narrowness 
of creed, and they cried out for room and air, for 
liberty and charity! 

Though differences of creed played no part in 
Masonry, neverthless it held religion in high es- 


1It was, perhaps, a picture of the Masonic Lodges of that era 
that Toland drew in his Socratic Society, published in 1720, which, 
however, he clothed in a vesture quite un-Grecian. At least, the 
symposia or brotherly feasts of his society, their give-and-take of 
questions and answers, their aversion to the rule of mere physical 
force, to compulsory religious belief, and to creed hatred, as well 
as their mild and tolerant disposition and their brotherly regard 
for one another, remind one of the spirit and habits of the Masons 
of that day. 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 179 


teem, and was then, as now, the steadfast upholder 
of the only two articles of faith that never were in- 
vented by man — the existence of God and the im- 
mortality of the soul! Accordingly, every Lodge 
was opened and closed with prayer to the “Al- 
mighty Architect of the universe;”’ and when a 
Lodge of mourning met in memory of a brother 
fallen asleep, the formula was: “He has passed over 
into the eternal FEast,’’—to that region whence 
cometh light and hope. Unsectarian in religion, the 

Masons were also non-partisan in politics: one prin- 
ciple being common to them all— love of country, 
respect for law and order, and the desire for hu- 
man welfare.. Upon that basis the first Grand 


1Now is as good a time as another to name certain curious 
theories which have been put forth to account for the origin of 
Masonry in general, and of the organization of the Grand Lodge 
in particular. They are as follows: First, that it was all due to 
an imaginary Temple of Solomon described by Lord Bacon in a 
utopian romance called the New Ailantis; and this despite the fact 
that the temple in the Bacon story was not a house at all, but the 
name of an ideal state. Second, that the object of Freemasonry and 
the origin of the Third Degree was the restoration of Charles II 
to the throne of England; the idea being that the Masons, who 
called themselves “Sons of the Widow,” meant thereby to express 
their allegiance to the Queen. Third, that Freemasonry was found- 
ed by Oliver Cromwell—he of all men!—to defeat the royalists. 
Fourth, that Free-masons were derived from the order of the 
Knights Templars. Even Lessing once held this theory, but seems 
later to have given it up. Which one of these theories surpasses 
the others in absurdity, it would be hard to say. De Quincey ex- 
plodes them one by one with some detail in his “Inquiry into the 


180 THE BUILDERS 


Lodge was founded, and upon that basis Masonry 
rests today — holding that a unity of spirit is better 
than a uniformity of opinion, and that beyond the 
great and simple “religion in which all men agree” 
no dogma is worth a breach of charity. 


I] 


With honorable pride in this tradition of spirit- 
ual faith and intellectual freedom, we are all the 
more eager to recite such facts as are known about 
the organization of the first Grand Lodge. How 
many Lodges of Masons existed in London at that 
time is a matter of conjecture, but there must have 
been a number. What bond, if any, united them, © 
other than their esoteric secrets and customs, is 
equally unknown. Nor is there any record to tell 
us whether all the Lodges in and about London 
were invited to join in the movement. Unfortun- 
ately the minutes of the Grand Lodge only com- 
mence on June 24, 1723, and our only history of the 
events is that found in The New Book of Constitu- 
tions, by Dr. James Anderson, in 1738. However, 
if not an actor in the scene, he was in a position to 
know the facts from eye-witnesses, and his book 


Origin of the Free-masons,” to which he might also have added 
his own pet notion of the Rosicrucian origin of the order — it be- 
ing only a little less fantastic than the rest (De Quinceys Works, 
vol. xvi). 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND I8I 


was approved by the Grand Lodge itself. His ac- 
count is so brief that it may be given as it stands: 


King George I enter’d London most magnificently on 
20 Sept. 1714. And after the Rebellion was over A. D. 
1716, the few Lodges at London finding themselves neg- 
lected by Sir Christopher Wren, thought fit to cement 
under a Grand Master as the Centre of Union and Har- 
mony, viz., the Lodges that met, 

1. At the Goose and Gridiron Ale house in St. Paul’s 
Church-Yard. 

2. At the Crown Ale-house in Parker’s Lane near 
Drury Lane. 

3. At the Apple-Tree Tavern in Charles-street, Cov- 
ent-Garden, 

4. At the Rummer and Grape Tavern in Channel- 
Row, Westminster. 

They and some other old Brothers met at the said 
Apple-Tree, and having put into the chair the oldest 
Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge) they con- 
stituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in Due 
Form, and forthwith revived the Quarterly Communica- 
tion of the Officers of Lodges (call’d the GRAND 
LODGE) resolv’d to hold the Annual Assembly and 
Feast, and then to chuse a Grand Master from among 
themselves, till they should have the Honor of a Noble 
Brother at their Head. 

Accordingly, on St. John’s Baptist’s Day, in the 3d 
year of King George I, A. D. 1717, the ASSEMBLY 
and Feast of the Free and Accepted Masons was held at 
the foresaid Goose and Gridiron Ale-house. 


182 THE BUILDERS 


Before Dinner, the oldest Master Mason (now the 
Master of a Lodge) in the Chair, proposed a List of 
proper Candidates; and the Brethren by a majority of 
Hands elected Mr. Anthony Sayer, Gentleman, Grand 
Master of Masons (Mr. Jacob Lamball, Carpenter, Capt. 
Joseph Elliot, Grand Wardens) who being forthwith in- 
vested with the Badges of Office and Power by the said 
oldest Master, and install’d, was duly congratulated by 
the Assembly who paid him the Homage. 

Sayer, Grand Master, commanded the Masters and 
Wardens of Lodges to meet the Grand Officers every 
Quarter in Communication, at the Place that he should — 
appoint in the Summons sent by the Tyler. 

So reads the only record that has come down to 
us of the founding of the Grand Lodge of England. 
Preston and others have had no other authority 
than this passage for their descriptions of the 
scene, albeit when Preston wrote, such facts as he 
added may have been learned from men still living. 
Who were present, beyond the three officers named, 
has so far eluded all research, and the only varia- 
tion in the accounts is found in a rare old book 
called Multa Paucis, which asserts that six Lodges, 
not four, were represented. Looking at this record 
in the light of what we know of the Masonry of 
that period, a number of things are suggested: 

First, so far from being a revolution, the organ- 
ization of the Grand Lodge was a revival of the old 
quarterly and annual Assembly, born, doubtless, of 
a felt need of community of action for the welfare 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 183 


of the Craft. There was no idea of innovation, but, 
as Anderson states in a note, “it should meet 
Quarterly according to ancient Usage,’ tradition 
having by this time become authoritative in such 
matters. Hints of what the old usages were are 
given in the observance of St. John’s Day’ as a 
feast, in the democracy of the order and its manner 
of voting by a show of hands, in its deference to 
the oldest Master Mason, its use of badges of office,’ 
its ceremony of installation, all in a lodge duly 
tyled. 


1 Of the Masonic feasts of St. John the Baptist and St. John the 
Evangelist much has been written, and to little account. In pre- 
Christian times, as we have seen, the Roman Collegia were wont to 
adopt pagan deities as patrons. When Christianity came, the names 
of its saints—some of them martyrs of the order of builders — 
were substituted for the old pagan gods. Why the two Saints John 
were chosen by Masons —rather than St. Thomas, who was the pa- 
tron saint of architecture—has never been made clear. At any 
rate, these two feasts, coming at the time of the summer and winter 
solstices, are in reality older than Christianity, being reminiscences 
of the old Light Religion in which Masonry had its origin. 

2 The badge of office was a huge white apron, such as we see in 
Hogarth’s picture of the Night. The collar was of much the same 
shape as that at present in use, only shorter. When the color was 
changed to blue, and why, is uncertain, but probably not until 1813, 
when we begin to see both apron and collar edged with blue. (See 
chapter on “Clothing and Regalia,’ in Things a Freemason Ought 
to Know, by J. W. Crowe.) In 1727 the officers of all private — 
or as we would say, subordinate — Lodges were ordered to wear 
“the jewels of Masonry hanging to a white apron.” In 1731 we 
find the Grand Master wearing gold or gilt jewels pendant to blue 
ribbons about the neck, and a white leather apron lined with blue 
silk, 


184 THE BUILDERS 


Second, it is clear that, instead of being a delib- 
erately planned effort to organize Masonry in gen- 
eral, the Grand Lodge was intended at first to af- 
fect only London and Westminster ; * the desire be- 
ing to weld a link of closer fellowship and coopera- 
tion between the Lodges. While we do not know 
the names of the moving spirits — unless we may 
infer that the men elected to office were such — 
nothing is clearer than that the initiative came from 
the heart of the order itself, and was in no sense 1m- 
posed upon it from without; and so great was the 
necessity for it that, when once started, link after 
link was added until it “put a girdle around the 
earthy,” 

Third, of the four Lodges * known to have taken 
part, only one — that meeting at the Rummer and 
Grape Tavern — had a majority of Accepted Ma- 


1 This is clear from the book of Constitutions of 1723, which is 
said to be “for the use of Lodges in London.” ‘Then follow the 
names of the Masters and Wardens of twenty Lodges, all in Lon- 
don. There was no thought at the time of imposing the authority 
of the Grand Lodge upon the country in general, much less upon 
the world. Its growth we shall sketch later. For an excellent ar- 
ticle on “The Foundation of Modern Masonry,” by G. W. Speth, 
giving details of the organization of the Grand Lodge and its 
changes, see A. QO. C., ii, 86. If an elaborate account is wanted, it 
may be found in Gould’s History of Masonry, vol. iii. 

2 History of the Four Lodges, by R. F. Gould. Apparently 
the Goose and Gridiron Lodge — No. 1 — is the only one of the four 
now in existence. After various changes of name it is now the 
Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2. 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 18s 


sons in its membership; the other three being Oper- 
ative Lodges, or largely so. Obviously, then, the 
movement was predominantly a movement of Op- 
erative Masons — or of men who had been Opera- 
tive Masons — and not, as has been so often im- 
plied, the design of men who simply made use of the 
remnants of operative Masonry the better to exploit 
some hidden philosophy. Yet it is worthy of note 
that the leading men of the craft in those early 
years were, nearly all of them, Accepted Masons 
and members of the Rummer and Grape Lodge. Be- 
sides Dr. Anderson, the historian, both George 
Payne and Dr. Desaguliers, the second and third 
Grand Masters, were of that Lodge. In 1721 the 
Duke of Montagu was elected to the chair, and 
thereafter members of the nobility sat in the East 
until it became the custom for the Prince of Wales 
to be Grand Master of Masons in England.’ 

Fourth, why did Masonry alone of all trades and 
professions live after its work was done, preserving 
not only its identity of organization, but its old em- 
blems and usages, and transforming them into in- 
struments of religion and righteousness? ‘The 
cathedrals had long been finished or left incomplete; 
the spirit of Gothic architecture was dead and the 
style treated almost with contempt. The occupa- 

1 Royal Masons, by G. W. Speth. 


186 THE BUILDERS 


tion of the Master Mason was gone, his place hav- 
ing been taken by the architect who, like Wren and 
Inigo Jones, was no longer a child of the Lodges as 
in the old days, but a man trained in books and by 
foreign travel. Why did not Freemasonry die, 
along with the Guilds, or else revert to some kind of 
trades-union? Surely here is the best possible proof 
that it had never been simply an order of architects 
building churches, but a moral and spiritual fellow- 
ship — the keeper of great symbols and a teacher of 
truths that never die. So and only so may anyone 
ever hope to explain the story of Masonry, and 
those who do not see this fact have no clue to its 
history, much less an understanding of its genius. 

Of course these pages cannot recite in detail the 
history and growth of the Grand Lodge, but a few 
of the more salient events may be noted. As early 
as 1719 the Old Charges, or Gothic Constitutions, 
began to be collected and collated, a number having 
already been burned by scrupulous Masons to pre- 
vent their falling into strange hands. In 1721, 
Grand Master Montagu found fault with the Old 
Charges as being inadequate, and ordered Dr. 
Anderson to make a digest of them with a view to 
formulating a better set of regulations for the rule 
of the Lodges. Anderson obeyed —he seems to 
have been engaged in such a work already, and may 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 187 


have suggested the idea to the Grand Master — and 
a committee of fourteen “learned brethren” was ap- 
pointed to examine the MS and make report. They 
suggested a few amendments, and the book was or- 
dered published by the Grand Master, appearing in 
the latter part of 1723. This first issue, however, 
did not contain the account of the organization of 
the Grand Lodge, which does not seem to have been 
added until the edition of 1738. How much Past 
Grand Master Payne had to do with this work is not 
certain, but the chief credit is due to Dr. Anderson, 
who deserves the perpetual gratitude of the order 
—the more so if he it was who wrote the article, 
already quoted, setting forth the religious attitude 
of the order. That article, by whomsoever written, 
is one of the great documents of mankind, and it 
would be an added joy to know that it was penned 
by a minister.” The Book of Constitutions, which 


1From a meager sketch of Dr. Anderson in the Gentlemen’s 
Magazine, 1783, we learn that he was a native of Scotland — the 
place of his birth is not given—and that for many years he was 
minister of the Scots Presbyterian Church in Swallow Street, Pic- 
cadilly, and well known to the folk of that faith in London — called 
“Bishop” Anderson by his friends. He married the widow of an 
army officer, who bore him a son and a daughter. Although a 
learned man—compiler of a book of Royal Genealogies, which 
seems to have been his hobby—he was somewhat imprudent in 
business, having lost most of his property in 1720. Whether he was 
a Mason before coming to London is unknown, but he took a great 
part in the work of the Grand Lodge, entering it, apparently, in 


188 THE BUILDERS 


is still the groundwork of Masonry, has been print- 
ed in many editions, and is accessible to every one. 

Another event in the story of the Grand Lodge, 
never to be forgotten, was a plan started in 1724 
of raising funds of General Charity for distressed 
Masons. Proposed by the Earl of Dalkeith, it at 
once met with enthusiastic support, and it is a cu- 
rious coincidence that one of the first to petition for 
relief was Anthony Sayer, first Grand Master. The 
minutes do not state whether he was relieved at 
that time, but we know that sums of money were 
voted to him in 1730, and again in 1741. This 
Board of Benevolence, as it came to be called, be- 
came very important, it being unanimously agreed 
in 1733 that all such business as could not be con- 
veniently despatched by the Quarterly Communica- 
tion should be referred to it. Also, that all Masters 
of Regular Lodges, together with all present, for- 
mer, and future Grand Officers should be members 
of the Board. Later this Board was still further em- 
powered to hear complaints and to report thereon 
to the Grand Lodge. Let it also be noted that in ac- 
tual practice the Board of Charity gave free play to 


1721. Toward the close of his life he suffered many misfortunes, 
but of what description we are not told. He died in 1739. Perhaps 
his learning was exaggerated by his Masonic eulogists, but he was a 
noble man and manifestly a useful one (Gould’s History of Ma- 
sonry, vol. ili). 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 189 


one of the most admirable principles of Masonry — 
helping the needy and unfortunate, whether within 
the order or without. 


Ill 


Once more we come to a much debated question, 
about which not a little has been written, and most 
of it wide of the mark — the question of the origin 
of the Third Degree. Here again students have 
gone hither and yon hunting in every cranny for 
the motif of this degree, and it would seem that 
their failure to find it would by this time have turned 
them back to the only place where they may ever 
hope to discover it— in Masonry itself. But no; 
they are bound to bring mystics, occultists, alche- 
mists, Culdees or Cabalists—even the Vehmgerichte 
of Germany — into the making of Masonry some- 
where, if only for the sake of glamor, and this is the 
last opportunity to do it.". Willing to give due credit 


1 Having emphasized this point so repeatedly, the writer feels it 
just to himself to state his own position, lest he be thought a kind 
of materialist, or at least an enemy of mysticism. Not so. Instead, 
he has long been an humble student of the great mystics; they are 
his best friends —as witness his two little books, The Eternal Christ, 
and What Have the Saints to Teach Us? But mysticism is one 
thing, and mystification is another, and the former may be stated in 
this way: 

First, by mysticism—only another word for spirituality — is 
meant our sense of an Unseen World, of our citizenship in it, of 
God and the soul, and of all the forms of life and beauty as sym- 


190 THE BUILDERS 


to Cabalists and Rosicrucians, the present writer 
rejects all such theories on the ground that there 
is no reason for thinking that they helped to make 
Masonry, much less any fact to prove tt. 

Hear now a review of the facts in the case. No 
one denies that the Temple of Solomon was much 
in the minds of men at the time of the organization 
of the Grand Lodge, and long before —as in the 
Bacon romance of the New Atlantis in 1597.’ 


bols of things higher than themselves. That is to say, if a man has 
any religion at all that is not mere theory or form, he is a mystic; 
the difference between him and Plato or St. Francis being only a 
matter of genius and spiritual culture — between a boy whistling a 
tune and Beethoven writing music. 

Second, since mysticism is native to the soul of man and the 
common experience of all who rise above the animal, it is not an 
exclusive possession of any set of adepts to be held as a secret. Any 
man who bows in prayer, or lifts his thought heavenward, is an 
initiate into the eternal mysticism which is the strength and solace 
of human life. 

Third, the old time Masons were religious men, and as such 
sharers in this great human experience of divine things, and did 
not need to go to Hidden Teachers to learn mysticism. ‘They lived 
and worked in the light of it. It shone in their symbols, as it does 
in all symbols that have any meaning or beauty. It is, indeed, the 
soul of symbolism, every emblem being an effort to express a reality 
too great for words. 

So, then, Masonry is mystical as music is mystical —like poetry, 
and love, and faith, and prayer, and all else that makes it worth 
our time to live; but its mysticism is sweet, sane, and natural, far 
from fantastic, and in nowise eerie, unreal, or unbalanced. Of 
course these words fail to describe it, as all words must, and it is 
therefore that Masonry uses parables, pictures, and symbols. 

1 Seventeenth Century Descriptions of Solomon’s Temple, by 
Prof. $. P. Johnston (4. Q. C., xii, 135). 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND i191 


Broughton, Selden, Lightfoot, Walton, Lee, Pri- 
deaux, and other English writers were deeply inter- 
ested in the Hebrew Temple, not, however, so much 
in its symbolical suggestion as in its form and con- 
struction — a model of which was brought to Lon- 
don. by Judah Templo in the reign of Charles IT.’ 
It was much the same on the Continent, but so far 
from being a new topic of study and discussion, we 
may trace this interest in the Temple all through 
the Middle Ages. Nor was it peculiar to the Cabal- 
ists, at least not to such a degree that they must 
needs be brought in to account for the Biblical 
imagery and symbolism in Masonry. Indeed, it 
might with more reason be argued that Masonry 
explains the interest in the Temple than otherwise. 
For, as James Fergusson remarks — and there is no 
higher authority than the historian of architecture: 
“There is perhaps no building of the ancient world 
which has excited so much attention since the time 
_ of its destruction, as the Temple of Solomon built 
in Jerusalem, and its successor as built by Herod. 
Throughout the Middle A ges it influenced to a con- 
siderable degree the forms of Christian churches, 
and its peculiarities were the watchwords and rally- 
mg points of associations of builders.’* Clearly, 
the notion that interest in the Temple was new, and 


1 Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. ii. 
2Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, article “Temple.” 


192 THE BUILDERS 


that its symbolical meaning was imposed upon Ma- 
sonry as something novel, falls flat. 

But we are told that there is no hint of the Hiram- 
ic legend, still less any intimation of a tragedy asso- 
ciated with the building of the Temple. No Hiram- 
ic legend! No hint of tragedy! Why, both were 
almost as old as the Temple itself, rabbinic legend 
affirming that “all the workmen were killed that 
they should not build another Temple devoted to 
idolatry, Hiram himself being translated to heaven 
like Enoch.” * ‘The Talmud has many variations of 
this legend. Where would one expect the legends 
of the Temple to be kept alive and be made use of 
in ceremonial, if not in a religious order of builders 
like the Masons? Is it surprising that we find so 
few references in later literature to what was thus 
held as a sacred secret? As we have seen, the leg- 
end of Hiram was kept as a profound secret until 
1841 by the French Companionage, who almost cer- 
tainly learned it from the Free-masons. Naturally 
it was never made a matter of record,’ but was 


1 Jewish Encyclopedia, art. “Freemasonry.” Also Builder's Rites, 
G. W. Speth. 

2In the Book of Constitutions, 1723, Dr. Anderson dilates at 
length on the building of the Temple — including a note on the mean- 
ing of the name Abif, which, it will be remembered, was not found in 
the Authorized Version of the Bible; and then he suddenly breaks 
off with the words: “But leaving what must not, indeed cannot, be 
communicated in Writing.’ It is incredible that he thus introduced 


GRAND LODGE, OF ENGLAND 193 


transmitted by oral tradition within the order; and 
it was also natural, if not inevitable, that the legend 
of the master-artist of the Temple should be ‘‘the 
Master’s Part’? among Masons who were temple- 
builders. How else explain the veiled allusions to 
the name in the Old Charges as read to Entered 
Apprentices, if it was not a secret reserved for a 
higher rank of Mason? Why any disguise at all 
if it had no hidden meaning? Manifestly the motif 
of the Third Degree was purely Masonic, and we 
need not go outside the traditions of the order to 
account for it. 

Not content to trace the evolution of Masonry, 
even so able a man as Albert Pike will have it that 
to a few men of intelligence who belonged to one 
of the four old lodges in 1717 “‘is to be ascribed the 
authorship of the Third Degree, and the introduc- 
tion of Hermetic and other symbols into Masonry; 
that they framed the three degrees for the purpose 
of communicating their doctrines, veiled by their 
symbols, to those fitted to receive them, and gave to 
others trite moral explanations they could compre- 
hend.”* How gracious of them to vouchsafe even 
trite explanations, but why frame a set of degrees 


among Masons a name and legend unknown to them. Had he done 

so, would it have met with such instant and universal acceptance by 

old Masons who stood for the ancient usages of the order? 
1Letter to Gould “Touching Masonic Symbolism.” 


194 THE BUILDERS 


to conceal what they wished to hide? This is the 
same idea of something alien imposed upon Mason- 
ry from without, with the added suggestion, novel 
indeed, that Masonry was organized to hide the 
truth, rather than to teach it. But did Masonry 
have to go outside its own history and tradition to 
learn Hermetic truths and symbols? Who was 
Hermes? Whether man or myth no one knows, but 
he was a great figure in the Egyptian Mysteries, 
and was called the Father of Wisdom.* What was 
his wisdom? From such fragments of his lore as 
have floated down to us, impaired, it may be, but 
always vivid, we discover that his wisdom was only 
a high spiritual faith and morality taught in visions 
and rhapsodies, and using numbers as symbols. 
Was such wisdom new to Masonry? Had_ not 
Hermes himself been a hero of the order from the 
first, of whom we read in the Old Charges, in which 
he has a place of honor alongside Euclid and Py- 
thagoras? Wherefore go elsewhere than to Masonry 
itself to trace the pure stream of Hermetic faith 
through the ages? Certainly the men of the Grand 
Lodge were adepts, but they were Masonic adepts 
seeking to bring the buried temple of Masonry to 
light and reveal it in a setting befitting its beauty, 
not cultists making use of it to exploit a private 
scheme of the universe. 
1 Hermes and Plato, Edouard Schure. 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 19s 


Who were those “men of intelligence” to whom 
Pike ascribed the making of the Third Degree of 
Masonry? ‘Tradition has fixed upon Desaguliers 
as the ritualist of the Grand Lodge, and Lyon 
speaks of him as “the pioneer and co-fabricator of 
symbolical Masonry.” * ‘This, however, is an exag- 
geration, albeit Desaguliers was worthy of high 
eulogy, as were Anderson and Payne, who are said 
to have been his collaborators.” But the fact is that 


1 History of the Lodge of Edinburgh. 

2 Steinbrenner, following Findel, speaks of the Third Degree 
as if it were a pure invention, quoting a passage from Ahiman 
Rezon, by Lawrence Dermott, to prove it. He further states that 
Anderson and Desaguliers were “publicly accused of manufacturing 
the degree, which they never denied” (History of Masonry, chap. 
vii). But inasmuch as they were not accused of it until they had 
been many years in their graves, their silence is hardly to be won- 
dered at. Dr. Mackey styles Desaguliers “the Father of Modern 
Speculative Masonry,” and attributes to him, more than to any 
other one man, the present existence of the order as a living in- 
stitution (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry). Surely that is going too 
far, much as Desaguliers deserves to be honored by the order. Dr. 
J. T. Desaguliers was a French Protestant clergyman, whose family 
came to England following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
He was graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1710, 
succeeding Keill as lecturer in Experimental Philosophy. He was 
especially learned in natural philosophy, mathematics, geometry, 
and optics, having lectured before the King on various occasions. 
He was very popular in the Grand Lodge, and his power as an 
orator made his manner of conferring a degree impressive — which 
may explain his having been accused of inventing the degrees. He 
was a loyal and able Mason, a student of the history and ritual 
of the order, and was elected as the third Grand Master of Masons 
in England. Like Anderson, his later life is said to have been be- 


196 THE BUILDERS 


the Third Degree was not made; it grew — like the 
great cathedrals, no one of which can be ascribed 
to a single artist, but to an order of men working 
in unity of enterprise and aspiration. The process 
by which the old ritual, described in the Sloane MS, 
was divided and developed into three degrees be- 
tween 1717 and 1730 was so gradual, so imper- 
ceptible, that no exact date can be set; still less can 
it be attributed to any one or two men. From the 
minutes of the Musical Society we learn that the 
Lodge at the Queen’s Head in Hollis Street was 
using three distinct degrees in 1724. As early as 
1727 we come upon the custom of setting apart a 
separate night for the Master’s Degree, the drama 
having evidently become more elaborate. 

Further than this the Degree may not be dis- 
cussed, except to say that the Masons, tiring of the 
endless quarrels of sects, turned for relief to the 
Ancient Mysteries as handed down in their tradi- 
tions — the old, high, heroic faith in God, and in 
the soul of man as the one unconquerable thing up- 
on this earth. If, as Aristotle said, it be the mis- 
sion of tragedy to cleanse and exalt us, leaving us 
subdued with a sense of pity and hope and fortified 
against ill fortune, it is permitted us to add that in 


clouded by poverty and sorrow, though some of the facts are in 
dispute (Gould’s History of Masonry, vol. iii). 


GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND _ 197 


simplicity, depth, and power, in its grasp of the 
realities of the life of man, its portrayal of the stu- 
pidity of evil and the splendor of virtue, its revela- 
tion of that in our humanity which leads it to defy 
death, giving up everything, even to life itself, 
rather than defame, defile, or betray its moral in- 
tegrity, and in its prophecy of the victory of light 
over shadow, there is not another drama known 
among men like the Third Degree of Masonry. Ed- 
win Booth, a loyal Mason, and no mean judge of 
the essence of tragedy, left these words: 


In all my research and study, in all my close analysis 
of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, in my earnest deter- 
mination to make those plays appear real on the mimic 
stage, I have never, and nowhere, met tragedy so real, 
so sublime, so magnificent as the legend of Hiram. It is 
substance without shadow — the manifest destiny of life 
which requires no picture and scarcely a word to make 
a lasting impression upon all who can understand. ‘To 
be a Worshipful Master, and to throw my whole soul 
into that work, with the candidate for my audience and 
the Lodge for my stage, would be a greater personal dis- 
tinction than to receive the plaudits of people in the the- 
aters of the world. 


'' 


These signs and tokens are of no small value; 
they speak a universal language, and act as a 
passport to the attention and support of the ini- 
tiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be 
lost so long as memory retains its power. Let 
the possessor of them be expatriated, ship- 
wrecked, or imprisoned; let him be stripped of 
everything he has got in the world; still these 
credentials remain and are available for use as 
circumstances require. 

The great effects which they have produced 
are established by the most incontestable facts of 
jistory. They have stayed the uplifted hand of 
the destroyer; they have’ softened the asperities 
of the tyrant; they have mitigated the horrors of 
captivity; they have subdued the rancor of mal. 
evolence; and broken down the barriers of polit- 
ical animosity and sectarian alienation. 

On the field of battle, in the solitude of the un- 
cultivated forests, or in the busy haunts of the 
crowded city, they have made men of the most 
hostile feelings, and most distant religions, and 
the most diversified conditions, rush to the aid of 
each other, and feel a social joy and satisfaction 
that they have been able to afford relief to a 
brother Mason. — BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 


CHAPTER V 


Universal Masonry 


I 
E,NNCEFORTH the Masons of England were 


no longer a society of handicraftsmen, but an 
association of men of all orders and every vocation, 
_as also of almost every creed, who met together on 
the broad basis of humanity, and recognized no 
standard of human worth other than morality, 
kindliness, and love of truth. ‘They retained the 
symbolism of the old Operative Masonry,” its lan- 
guage, its legends, its ritual, and its oral tradition. 
No longer did they build churches, but the spiritual 


1 Operative Masonry, it should be remembered, was not entirely 
dead, nor did it all at once disappear. Indeed, it still exists in some 
form, and an interesting account of its forms, degrees, symbols, 
usages, and traditions may be found in an article on “Operative 
Masonry,” by C. E. Stretton (Transactions Leicester Lodge of 
Research, 1909-10, 1911-12). The second of these volumes also con- 
tains an essay on “Operative Free-masons,’ by Thomas Carr, with 
a list of lodges, and a study of their history, customs, and em- 
blems — especially the Swastika. Speculative Masons are now said 
to be joining these Operative Lodges, seeking more light on what 
are called the Lost Symbols of Masonry. 


202 THE BUILDERS 


temple of humanity; using the Square not to meas- 
ure right angles of blocks of stone, but for evening 
the inequalities of human character, nor the Com- 
pass any more to describe circles on a tracing-board, 
but to draw a Circle of goodwill around all man- 
kind. 

Howbeit, one generation of men, as Hume re- 
marks, does not go off the stage at once, and an- 
other succeed, like silkworms and butterflies. No 
more did this metamorphosis of Masonry, so to 
name it, take place suddenly or radically, as it has 
become the fashion to think. It was a slow process, 
and like every such period the Epoch of Transition 
was attended by many problems, uncertainties, and 
difficulties. Some of the Lodges, as we have noted, 
would never agree to admit Accepted Masons, so 
jealous were they of the ancient landmarks of the 
Craft. Even the Grand Lodge, albeit a revival of 
the old Assembly, was looked upon with suspicion 
by not a few, as tending toward undue centraliza- 
tion; and not without cause. From the first the 
Grand Master was given more power than was ever 
granted to the President of an ancient Assembly; 
of necessity so, perhaps, but it led to misunderstand- 
ing. Other influences added to the confusion, and 
at the same time emphasized the need of welding 
the order into a more coherent unity for its wider 
service to humanity. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 203 


There are hints to the effect that the new Mason- 
ry, if so it may be called, made very slow progress 
in the public favor at first, owing to the conditions 
just stated; and this despite the remark of Ander- 
son in June, 1719: “Now several old Brothers that 
had neglected the Craft, visited the Lodges; some 
Noblemen were also made Brothers, and more new 
Lodges were constituted.” Stuckely, the antiquarian, 
tells us in his Diary under date of January, 1721 — 
at which time he was initiated — that he was the 
first person made a Mason in London for years, and 
that it was not easy to find men enough to perform 
the ceremony. Incidentally, he confides to us that 
he entered the order in search of the long hidden 
secrets of “the Ancient Mysteries.” No doubt he 
exaggerated in the matter of numbers, though it is 
possible that initiations were comparatively few at 
the time, the Lodges being recruited, for the most 
part, by the adhesion of old Masons, both Operative 
and Speculative; and among his friends he may 
have had some difficulty in finding men with an 
adequate knowledge of the ritual. But that there 
was any real difficulty in gathering together seven 
Masons in London is, on the face of it, absurd. Im- 
mediately thereafter, Stuckely records, Masonry 
“took a run, and ran itself out of breath through the 
folly of its members,” but he does not tell us what 
the folly was. The “run” referred to was almost 


204 THE BUILDERS 


certainly due to the acceptance by the Duke of Mon- 
tagu of the Grand Mastership, which gave the order 
a prestige it had never had before; and it was also 
in the same year, 1721, that the old Constitutions 
of the Craft were revised. 

Twelve Lodges attended the June quarterly com- 
munication of the Grand Lodge in 1721, sixteen in 
September, twenty in December, and by April, 1723, 
the number had grown to thirty. All these Lodges, 
be it noted, were in London, a fact amply justifying 
the optimism of Anderson in the last paragraph of 
the Book of Constitutions, issued in that year. So 
far the Grand Lodge had not extended its jurisdic- 
tion beyond London and Westminster, but the very 
next year, 1724, there were already nine Lodges in 
the provinces acknowledging its obedience, the first 
being the Lodge at the Queen’s Head, City of Bath. 
Within a few years Masonry extended its labors 
abroad, both on British and on foreign soil. The 
first Lodge on foreign soil was founded by the Duke 
of Wharton at Madrid, in 1728, and regularized the 
following year, by which time a Lodge had been 
established at the East India Arms, Bengal, and 
also at Gibraltar. It was not long before Lodges 
arose in many lands, founded by English Masons or 
by men who had received initiation in England; 
these Lodges, when sufficiently numerous, uniting 
under Grand Lodges — the old Lodge at York, that 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 205 


ancient Mecca of Masonry, had called itself a Grand 
Lodge as early as 1725. The Grand Lodge of Ire- 
land was created in 1729, those of Scotland* and 
France in 1736; a Lodge at Hamburg in 1737,’ 
though it was not patented until 1740; the Unity 
Lodge at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1742, another 
at Vienna the same year; the Grand Lodge of the 
Three World-spheres at Berlin in 1744; and so on, 
until the order made its advent in Sweden, Switzer- 
land, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. 
Following the footsteps of Masonry from land to 
land is almost as difficult as tracing its early his- 
tory, owing to the secrecy in which it enwrapped 


1The Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland, it may be added, 
were self-constituted, without assistance or intervention from Eng- 
land in any form. 

2A deputation of the Hamburg Lodge initiated Frederick — 
afterwards Frederick the Great of Prussia—into the order of 
Masons at Brunswick, August 14, 1738 (Frederick and his Times. 
by Campbell, History of Frederick, by Carlyle, Findel’s History of 
Masonry). Other noblemen followed his example, and their zeal 
for the order, gave a new date to the history of Masonry in Ger- 
many. When Frederick ascended the throne, in 1740, the Craft 
was honored, and it flourished in his kingdom. As to the interest of 
Frederick in the order in his later years, the facts are not clear, 
but that he remained its friend seems certain (Mackey, Encyclo- 
pedia). However, the Craft underwent many vicissitudes in Ger- 
many, a detailed account of which Findel recites (History of 
Masonry). Few realize through what frightful persecutions Masonry 
has passed in many lands, owing in part to its secrecy, but in larger 
part to its principle of civil and religious liberty. Whenever that 
story is told, as it surely will be, men everywhere will pay homage 
to the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons as friends of mankind. 


206 THE BUILDERS 


its movements. For example, in 1680 there came to 
South Carolina one John Moore, a native of Eng- 
land, who before the close of the century removed 
to Philadelphia, where, in 1703, he was Collector 
of the Port. Ina letter written by him in 1715, he 
mentions having “spent a few evenings in festivity 
with my Masonic brethren.”* This is the first ves- 
tige of Masonry in America, unless we accept as 
authentic a curious document in the early history of 
Rhode Island, as follows: ‘This ye [day and month 
obliterated] 1656, Wee mett att y House off Mor- 
dicai Campanell and after synagog gave Abram 
Moses the degrees of Maconrie.”* On June 5, 
1730, the first authority for the assembling of Free- 
masons in America was issued by the Duke of Nor- 
folk, to Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, appointing 
him Provincial Grand Master of New York, New 
Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and three years later 
Henry Price, of Boston, was appointed to the same 
office for New England. But Masons had evidently 
been coming to the New World for years, for the 

1 This letter was the property of Horace W. Smith, Philadelphia. 
John Moore was the father of William Moore, whose daughter 
became the wife of Provost Smith, who was a Mason in 1775, and 
afterward Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 
anid whose son was Grand Master of Masons in Pennsylvania in 


1796 and 1797 (History of Freemasonry, by Hughan and Stillson). 
2ITbid, chapter on “Early American Masonic History.” 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 207 


two cases just cited date back of the Grand Lodge of 
1717. 

How soon Coxe acted on the authority given him 
is not certain, but the Pennsylvama Gazette, pub- 
lished by Benjamin Franklin, contains many refer- 
ences to Masonic affairs as early as July, 1730. 
Just when Franklin himself became interested in 
Masonry is not of record—he was initiated in 
1730-31 ‘“— but he was a leader, at that day, of 
everything that would advance his adopted city; and 
the “Junto,” formed in 1725, often inaccurately 
called the Leathern-Apron Club, owed its origin to 
him. In a Masonic item in the Gazette of Decem- 
ber 3, 1730, he refers to “several Lodges of Free- 
masons” in the Province, and on June 9, 1732, 
notes the organization of the Grand Lodge of Penn- 
sylvania, of which he was appointed a Warden, at 
the Sun Tavern, in Water Street. Two years later 
Franklin was elected Grand Master, and the same 
year published an edition of the Book of Constitu- 
tions — the first Masonic book issued in America. 


1 Benjamin Franklin as a Free Mason, by J. F. Sachse. Oddly 
enough, there is no mention of Masonry by Franklin in his Auto- 
biography, or in any of his letters, with but two exceptions, so far 
as known; which is the more remarkable when we look at his 
Masonic career in France during the later years of his life, where 
he was actively and intimately associated with the order, even ad- 
vancing to the higher degrees. Never for a day did he abate by 
one jot his interest in the order, or his love for it. 


208 THE BUILDERS 


Thus Masonry made an early advent into the new 
world, in which it has labored so nobly, helping to 
lay the foundations and building its own basic prin- 
ciples into the organic law of the greatest of all 
republics. 


II 


Returning to the Grand Lodge of England, we 
have now to make record of ridicule and opposition 
from without, and, alas, of disloyalty and discord 
within the order itself. With the publication of the 
Book of Constitutions, by Anderson, in 1723, the 
platform and principles of Masonry became matters 
of common knowledge, and its enemies were alert 
and vigilant. None are so blind as those who will 
not see, and not a few, unacquainted with the spirit 
of Masonry, or unable to grasp its principle of lib- 
erality and tolerance, affected to detect in its secrecy 
some dark political design; and this despite the 
noble charge in the Book of Constitutions enjoining 
politics from entering the lodge —a charge hardly 
less memorable than the article defining its attitude 
toward differing religious creeds, and which it be- 
hooves Masons to keep always in mind as both true 
and wise, especially in our day when effort is being 
made to inject the religious issue into politics: 


In order to preserve peace and harmony no private 
piques or quarrels must be brought within the door of 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 209 


the Lodge, far less any quarrel about Religions or Na- 
tions or State-Policy, we being only, as Masons, of the 
Catholic Religion above mentioned (the religion in which 
all men agree); we are also of all Nations, Tongues, 
Kindreds and Languages, and are resolved against all 
Politics as what never yet conduced to the welfare of the 
Lodge, nor ever will. This charge has always been 
actively enjoined and observed; but especially ever since 
the Reformation in Britain or the dissent and secession 
of these Nations from the communion of Rome. 


No sooner had these noble words been printed," 
than there came to light a secret society calling it- 
self the “truly Ancient Noble Order of the Gor- 
mogons,”’ alleged to have been instituted by Chin- 
Quaw Ky-Po, the first Emperor of China, many 
thousand years before Adam. Notice of a meeting 
of the order appeared in the Daily Post, September 
3, 1723, in which it was stated, among other high- 
sounding declarations, that “no Mason will be re- 
ceived as a Member till he has renounced his noble 
order and been properly degraded.” Obviously, 
from this notice and others of like kind — all hint- 
ing at the secrets of the Lodges — the order was 


1 This injunction was made doubly strong in the edition of the 
Book of Constitutions, in 1738. For example: “no quarrels about 
nations, families, religion or politics must by any means or under 
any color or pretense whatever be brought within the door of the 
Lodge . . . Masons being of all nations upon the square, level 
and plumb; and like our predecessors in all ages, we are resolved 
against political disputes,” etc. 


210 THE BUILDERS 


aping Masonry by way of parody with intent to 
destroy it, if possible, by ridicule. For all that, if 
we may believe the Saturday Post of October fol- 
lowing, “many eminent Freemasons” had by that 
time ‘degraded themselves” and gone over to the 
Gormogons. Not “many” perhaps, but, alas, one 
eminent Mason at least, none other than a Past 
Grand Master, the Duke of Wharton, who, piqued 
at an act of the Grand Lodge, had turned against it. 
Erratic of mind, unstable of morals, having an in- 
ordinate lust for praise, and pilloried as a “fool” by 
Pope in his Moral Essays, he betrayed his fraternity 
—as, later, he turned traitor to his faith, his flag, 
and his native land! 

Simultaneously with the announcement that many 
eminent Masons had “degraded themselves’ — 
words most fitly chosen — and gone over to the Gor- 
mogons, there appeared a book called the Grand 
Mystery of Freemasons Discovered, and the cat was 
out of the bag. Everything was plain to the Ma- 
sons, and if it had not been clear, the way in which 
the writer emphasized his hatred of the Jesuits 
would have told it all. It was a Jesuit * plot hatched 


1 Masons have sometimes been absurdly called “Protestant Jes- 
uits,” but the two orders are exactly opposite in spirit, principle, 
purpose, and method. All that they have in common is that they 
are both secret societies, which makes it plain that the opposition of 
the Latin church to Masonry is not on the ground of its being a secret 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 211 


in Rome to expose the secrets of Masonry, and mak- 
ing use of the dissolute and degenerate Mason for 
that purpose—tactics often enough used in the name 
of Jesus! Curiously enough, this was further made 
evident by the fact that the order ceased to exist in 
1738, the year in which Clement XII published his 
Bull against the Masons. Thereupon the “ancient 

order of Gormogons” swallowed itself, and so disap- 
- peared — not, however, without one last, futile ef- 
fort to achieve its ends.* Naturally this episode 
stirred the Masons deeply. It was denounced in 
burning words on the floor of the Grand Lodge, 
which took new caution to guard its rites from 
treachery and vandalism, in which respects it had 
not exercised due care, admitting men to the order 
who were unworthy of the honor. 


order, else why sanction the Jesuits, to name no other? The differ- 
ence has been stated in this way: “Opposite poles these two societies 
are, for each possesses precisely those qualities which the other lacks. 
The Jesuits are strongly centralized, the Freemasons only con- 
federated. Jesuits are controlled by one man’s will, Freemasons 
are under majority rule. Jesuits bottom morality in expediency, 
Freemasons in regard for the well-being of mankind. Jesuits rec- 
ognize only one creed, Freemasons hold in respect all honest con- 
victions. Jesuits seek to break down individual independence, Free- 
masons to build it up’ (Mysteria, by Otto Henne Am Rhyn). 

1For a detailed account of the Duke of Wharton and the true 
history of the Gormogons, see an essay by R. F. Gould, in his 
“Masonic Celebrities” series (A. Q. C., viii, 144), and more recently, 
‘The Life and Writings of Philip, Duke of Wharton, by Lewis Mel- 
ville. 


212 THE BUILDERS 


There were those who thought that the power of 
Masonry lay in its secrecy; some think so still, not 
knowing that its real power lies in the sanctity of its 
truth, the simplicity of its faith, the sweetness of its 
spirit, and its service to mankind, and that if all its 
rites were made public today it would still hold the 
hearts of men.* Nevertheless, of alleged exposures 
there were many between 1724 and 1730, both anon- 
ymous and signed, and they made much ado, es- 
pecially among men who were not Masons. It will 
be enough to name the most famous, as well as the 
most elaborate, of them all, Masonry Dissected, by 
Samuel Prichard, which ran through three editions 
in one month, October, 1730, and called out a noble 
Defence of Masonry, written, it is thought, by An- — 
derson, but the present writer believes by Desagul- 
iers. Others came later, such as Jachin and Boag, — 
the Three Distinct Knocks, and so forth. They had 
their day and ceased to be, having now only an an- 
tiquarian interest to those who would know the man- 
ners and customs of a far-off time. Instead of in- 
juring the order, they really helped it, as such things 
usually do, by showing that there must be something 


1Findel has a nobly eloquent passage on this point, and it tells 
the everlasting truth (History of Masonry, p. 378). His whole his- 
tory, indeed, is exceedingly worth reading, the more so because it 
was one of the first books of the right kind, and it stimulated re- 
search. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY aT 


to expose since so many were trying to doit. But 
Masonry went marching on, leaving them behind in 
the rubbish of things forgotten, as it does all its 
back-stair spies and heel-snapping critics. 

More serious by far was the series of schisms 
within the order which began in 1725, and ran on 
even into the next century. For the student they 
make the period very complex, calculated to bewil- 
der the beginner; for when we read of four Grand 
Lodges in England, and for some years all of them 
running at once, and each one claiming to be the 
Grand Lodge of England, the confusion seems not a 
little confounded. Also, one Grand Lodge of a very 
limited territory, and few adherents, adopted the 
title of Grand Lodge of al] England, while another 
which commenced in the middle of the century as- 
sumed the title of ‘““The Ancients,” and dubbed the 
older and parent Grand Lodge “The Moderns.” Be- 
sides, there are traces of an unrecorded Grand body 
calling itself “The Supreme Grand Lodge,” ?* as if 
each were trying to make up in name what was lack- 
ing in numbers. Strict search and due inquiry into 
the causes of these divisions would seem to show the 
following results: 


1A paper entitled “An Unrecorded Grand Lodge,” by Sadler 
(A. Q. C., vol. xviii, 69-90), tells practically all that is known of this 
movement, which merged with the Grand Lodge of London in 1776. 


214 THE BUILDERS 


First, there was a fear, not unjustified by facts, 
that the ancient democracy of the order had been in- 
fringed upon by certain acts of the Grand Lodge of 
1717 —as, for example, giving to the Grand Mas- 
ter power to appoint the Wardens." Second, there 
was a tendency, due to the influence of some clergy- 
men active in the order, to give a distinctively Chris- 
tian tinge to Masonry, first in their interpretations 
of its symbols, and later to the ritual itself. This 
fact has not been enough emphasized by our histo- 
rians, for it explains much. Third, there was the fur- 
ther fact that Masonry in Scotland differed from 
Masonry in England, in details at least, and the two 
did not all at once harmonize, each being rather te- 
nacious of its usage and tradition. Fourth, in one 
instance, if no more, pride of locality and historic 
memories led to independent organization. Fifth, 
there was the ever-present element of personal am- 
bition with which all human societies, of whatever 
kind, must reckon at all times and places this side 


1 Nor was that all. In 1735 it was resolved in the Grand Lodge 
“that in the future all Grand Officers (except Grand Master) shall 
be selected out of that body” — meaning the past Grand Stewards. 
This act was amazing. Already the Craft had let go its power to 
elect the Wardens, and now the choice of the Grand Master was 
narrowed to the ranks of an oligarchy in its worst form—a queer 
outcome of Masonic equality. Three months later the Grand Stew- 
ards presented a memorial asking that they “might form themselves 
into a special lodge,” with special jewels, etc. Naturally this bred 
discontent and apprehension, and justly so. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 215 


of heaven. Altogether, the situation was amply 
conducive to division, if not to explosion, and the 
wonder is that the schisms were so few. 


Il 


Time out of mind the ancient city of York had 
been a seat of the Masonic Craft, tradition tracing 
it back to the days of Athelstan, in 926 A. D. Be 
that as it may, the Lodge minutes of York are the 
oldest in the country, and the relics of the Craft 
now preserved in that city entitle it to be called the 
Mecca of Masonry. Whether the old society was 
a Private or a Grand Lodge is not plain; but in 1725 
it assumed the title of the “Grand Lodge of All Eng- 
land,” — feeling, it would seem, that its inherent 
right by virtue of antiquity had in some way been 
usurped by the Grand Lodge of London. After ten 
or fifteen years the minutes cease, but the records 
of other grand bodies speak of it as still working. 
In 1761 six of its surviving members revived the 
Grand Lodge, which continued with varying suc- 
cess until its final extinction in 1791, having only a 
few subordinate Lodges, chiefly in Yorkshire. Never 
antagonistic, it chose to remain independent, and its 
history is a noble tradition. York Masonry was 
acknowledged by all parties to be both ancient and 
orthodox, and even to this day, in England and over 


216 THE BUILDERS 


the seas, a certain mellow, magic charm clings to 
the city which was for so long a meeting place of 
Masons.’ 

Far more formidable was the schism of 1753, 
which had its origin, as is now thought, in a group 
of Irish Masons in London who were not recognized 
by the premier Grand Lodge.* Whereupon they de- 
nounced the Grand Lodge, averring that it had 
adopted “new plans” and departed from the old 
landmarks, reverted, as they alleged, to the old 
forms, and set themselves up as Ancient Masons — 
bestowing upon their rivals the odious name of 
Moderns. Later the two were further distinguished 
from each other by the names of their respective 
Grand Masters, one called Prince of Wales’ Masons, 
the other the Atholl Masons.* The great figure in 
the Atholl Grand body was Lawrence Dermott, to 
whose keen pen and indefatigable industry as its 
secretary for more than thirty years was due, in 
large measure, its success. In 1756 he published its 
first book of laws, entitled Ahiman Rezon, Or Help 
to a Brother, much of which was taken from the 


1 Often we speak of “the York Rite,” as though it were the old- 
est and truest form of Masonry, but, while it serves to distinguish 
one branch of Masonry from another, it is not accurate; for, strict- 
ly speaking, there is no such thing as a York Rite. The name is 
more a tribute of reverence than a description of fact. 

2 Masonic Facts and Fictions, by Henry Sadler. 

3 Atholl Lodges, by R. F. Gould. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 217 


Trish Constitutions of 1751, by Pratt, and the rest 
from the Book of Constitutions, by Anderson — 
whom he did not fail to criticize with stinging satire, 
of which he was a master. Among other things, 
the office of Deacon seems to have had its origin 
with this body. Atholl Masons were presided over 
by the Masters of affiliated Lodges until 1756, when 
Lord Blessington, their first titled Grand Master, 
was induced to accept the honor — their warrants 
having been left blank betimes, awaiting the com- 
ing of a Nobleman to that office. Later the fourth 
Duke of Atholl was Grand Master at the same time 
of Scotland and of the Atholl Grand Lodge, the 
Grand Lodges of Scotland and Ireland being repre- 
sented at his installation in London. 

Still another schism, not serious but significant, 
came in 1778, led by William Preston,’ who after- 
wards became a shining light in the order. On St. 
John’s Day, December 27, 1777, the Antiquity 


1 William Preston was born in Edinburgh in 1742, and came as 
a journeyman printer to London in 1760, where he made himself 
conversant with the history, laws, and rites of the Craft, being much 
in demand as a lecturer. He was a good speaker, and frequently 
addressed the Lodges of the city. After his blunder of seceding 
had been forgiven, he was honored with many offices, especially 
the Grand Secretaryship, which gave him time to pursue his studies. 
Later he wrote the Freemason’s Callender, an appendix to the Book 
of Constitutions, a History of Masonry, and, most famous of all, 
Illustrations of Masonry, which passed through a score of editions. 
Besides, he had much to do with the development of the Ritual. 


218 THE BUILDERS 


Lodge of London, of which Preston was Master — 
one of the four original Lodges forming the Grand 
Lodge — attended church in a body, to hear a ser- 
mon by its Chaplain. They robed in the vestry, and 
then marched into the church, but after the service 
they walked back to the Hall wearing their Masonic 
clothing. Difference of opinion arose as to the reg- 
ularity of the act, Preston holding it to be valid, if 
for no other reason, by virtue of the inherent right 
of Antiquity Lodge itself. Three members objected 
to his ruling and appealed to the Grand Lodge, he 
foolishly striking their names off the Lodge roll for 
so doing. Eventually the Grand Lodge took the 
matter up, decided against Preston, and ordered the 
reinstatement of the three protesting members. At 
its next meeting the Antiquity Lodge voted not to 
comply with the order of the Grand Lodge, and, in- 
stead, to withdraw from that body and form an alli- 
ance with the “Old Grand Lodge of All England at 
York City,” as they called it. They were received 
by the York Grand Lodge, and soon thereafter ob- 
tained a constitution for a “Grand Lodge of Eng- 
land South of the Trent.” Although much vitality 
was shown at the outset, this body only constituted 
two subordinate Lodges, and ceased to exist. Hav- 
ing failed, in 1789 Preston and his friends recanted 
their folly, apologized to the Grand Lodge, reunited 
with the men whom they had expelled, and were 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 219 


received back into the fold; and so the matter ended. 

These divisions, while they were in some ways un- 
happy, really made for the good of the order in the 
sequel — the activity of contending Grand Lodges, 
often keen, and at times bitter, promoting the spread 
of its principles to which all were alike loyal, and to 
the enrichment of its Ritual * to which each contrib- 
uted. Dermott, an able executive and audacious an- 
tagonist, had left no stone unturned to advance the 
interests of Atholl Masonry, inducing its Grand 
Lodge to grant warrants to army Lodges, which 
bore fruit in making Masons in every part of the 
world where the English army went.? Howbeit, 


1The history of the Ritual is most interesting, and should be 
written in more detail (History of Masonry, by Steinbrenner, chap. 
vii, “The Ritual’). An article giving a brief story of it appeared 
in the Masonic Monthly, of Boston, November, 1863 (reprinted in the 
New England Craftsman, vol. vii, and still later in the Bulletin of 
Iowa Masonic Library, vol. xv, April, 1914). This article is valu- 
able as showing the growth of the Ritual—as much by subtraction 
as by addition —and especially the introduction into it of Christian 
imagery and interpretation, first by Martin Clare in 1732, and by 
Duckerley and Hutchinson later. One need only. turn to The Spirit 
of Masonry, by Hutchinson (1802), to see how far this tendency 
had gone when at last checked in 1813. At that time a committee 
made a careful comparative study of all rituals in use among 
Masons, and the ultimate result was the Preston-Webb lectures 
now generally in use in this country. (See a valuable article by Dr. 
Mackey on “The Lectures of Freemasonry,” American Quarterly 
Review of Freemasonry, vol. ii, p. 297.) What a pity that this Re- 
view died of too much excellence! 

2 Military Lodges, by Gould; also Kipling’s poem, The Mother 
Lodge. 


220 THE BUILDERS ; 


when that resourceful secretary and uncompromis- 

ing fighter had gone to his long rest, a better mood 
began to make itself felt, and a desire to heal the 
feud and unite all the Grand Lodges — the way hav- 
ing been cleared, meanwhile, by the demise of the 
old York Grand Lodge and the “Grand Lodge 
South of the Trent.” Overtures to that end were 
made in 1802 without avail, but by 1809 committees 
were meeting and reporting on the “propriety and 
practicability of union.” Fraternal letters were ex- 
changed, and at last a joint committee met, can- 
vassed all differences, and found a way to heal the 
schism.” 


1 Among the articles of union, it was agreed that Freemasonry 
should consist of the three symbolic degrees, “including the Holy 
Royal Arch.’ The present study does not contemplate a detailed 
study of Capitular Masonry, which has its own history and his- 
torians (Origin of the English Rite, Hughan), except to say that 
it seems to have begun about 1738-40, the concensus of opinion dif- 
fering as to whether it began in England or on the Continent 
(“Royal Arch Masonry,” by C. P. Noar, Manchester Lodge of Re- 
search, vol. iii, 1911-12). Lawrence Dermott, always alert, had it 
adopted by the Atholl Grand Lodge about thirty years before the 
Grand Lodge of England took it up in 1770-76, when Thomas Duck- 
erley was appointed to arrange and introduce it. Dermott held 
it to be “the very essence of Masonry,” and he was not slow in 
using it as a club with which to belabor the Moderns; but he did 
not originate it, as some imagine, having received the degrees be- 
fore he came to London, perhaps in an unsystemized form. Duck- 
erley was accused of shifting the original Grand Masonic word 
from the Third Degree to the Royal Arch, and of substituting an- 
other in its stead. Enough to say that Royal Arch Masonry is 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 221 


Union came at length, in a great Lodge of Recon- 
ciliation held in Freemason’s Hall, London, on St. 
John’s Day, December 27, 1813. It was a mem- 
orable and inspiring scene as the two Grand Lodges, 
so long estranged, filed into the Hall — delegates of 
641 Modern and 359 Ancient or Atholl Lodges — 
so mixed as to be indistinguishable the one from the 
other. Both Grand Masters had seats of honor in 
the East. The hour was fraternal, each side willing 
to sacrifice prejudice in behalf of principles held by 
all in common, and all equally anxious to preserve 
the ancient landmarks of the Craft —a most sig- 
nificant fact being that the Atholl Masons had in- 
sisted that Masonry erase such distinctively Chris- 
tion color as had crept into it, and return to its first 
platform.* Once united, free of feud, cleansed of 


authentic Masonry, being a further elaboration in drama, follow- 
ing the Third Degree, of the spirit and motif of old Craft Masonry 
(History of Freemasonry and Concordant Orders, by Hughan and 
Stillson). 

1It is interesting to note that the writer of the article on 
“Masonry” in the Catholic Encyclopedia —an article admirable in 
many ways, and for the most part fair—makes much of this point, 
and rightly so, albeit his interpretation of it is altogether wrong. 
He imagines that the objection to Christian imagery in the ritual 
was due to enmity to Christianity. Not so. Masonry was not then, 
and has never at any time been, opposed to Christianity, or to any 
other religion. Far from it. But Christianity in those days—as, 
alas, too often now —was another name for a petty and bigoted 
sectarianism; and Masonry by its very genius was, and is, umnsec- 
tarian. Many Masons then were devout Christians, as they are 


222 THE BUILDERS 


rancor, and holding high its unsectarian, non-par- 
tisan flag, Masonry moved forward to her great 
ministry. If we would learn the lesson of those long 
dead schisms, we must be vigilant, correcting our 
judgments, improving our regulations, and cultivat- 
ing that spirit of Love which is the fountain whence 
issue all our voluntary efforts for what is right and 
true: union in essential matters, liberty in every- 
thing unimportant and doubtful; Love always — 
one bond, one universal law, one fellowship in spirit 
and in truth! 


IV 


Remains now to give a glimpse — and, alas, only 
a glimpse — of the growth and influence of Mason- 
ry in America; and a great story it is, needing many 
volumes to tell it aright. As we have seen, it came 
early to the shores of the New World, long before 
the name of our great republic had been uttered, 
and with its gospel of Liberty, Equality, and Fra- 
ternity it helped to shape the institutions of this 
Continent. Down the Atlantic Coast, along the 
Great Lakes, into the wilderness of the Middle West 
and the forests of the far South — westward it 


now — not a few clergymen — but the order itself is open to men 
of all faiths, Catholic and Protestant, Hebrew and Hindu, who 
confess faith in God; and so it will always remain if it is true to 
its principles and history. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 223 


marched as “the star of empire’ led, setting up its 
altar on remote frontiers, a symbol of civilization, 
of loyalty to law and order, of friendship with 
school-house and church. If history recorded the 
unseen influences which go to the making of a na- 
tion, those forces for good which never stop, never 
tarry, never tire, and of which our social order is 
the outward and visible sign, then might the real 
story of Masonry in America be told. 

Instead of a dry chronicle,’ let us make effort to 
capture and portray the spirit of Masonry in Amer- 
ican history, if so that all may see how this great 
order actually presided over the birth of the repub- 
lic, with whose growth it has had so much to do. 
For example, no one need be told what patriotic 
memories cluster about the old Green Dragon Tav- 


1 As for the chronicle, the one indispensable book to the student 
of American Masonry is the History of Freemasonry and Con- 
cordant Orders, by W. J. Hughan and H. L,. Stillson, aided by one 
of the ablest board of contributors ever assembled. It includes a 
history of Masonry in all its Rites in North, Central, and South 
America, with accurate accounts of the origin and growth of every 
Grand Lodge in the United States and British America; also ad- 
mirable chapters on Early American Masonic History, the Morgan 
Excitement, Masonic Jurisprudence, and statistics up to date of 
1891 — all carefully prepared and well written. Among other books 
too many to name, there are the History of Symbolic Masonry in 
the United States, by J. H. Drummond, and “The American Ad- 
denda” to Gould’s massive and magnificent History of Masonry, 
vol. iv. What the present pages seek is the spirit behind this forest 
of facts. 


224 THE BUILDERS 


ern, in Boston, which Webster, speaking at Andover 
in 1823, called “the headquarters of the Revolution.” 
Even so, but it was also a Masonic Hall, in the 
“Long Room” of which the Grand Lodge of Massa- 
chusetts — an off-shoot of St. Andrew’s Lodge — 
was organized on St. John’s Day, 1767, with Joseph 
Warren, who afterwards fell at Bunker Hill, as 
Grand Master. There Samuel Adams, Paul Re- 
vere, Warren, Hancock, Otis and others met and 
passed resolutions, and then laid schemes to make 
them come true. There the Boston Tea Party was 
planned, and executed by Masons disguised as Mo- 
hawk Indians — not by the Lodge as such, but by a 
club formed within the Lodge, calling itself the Cau- 
cus Pro Bono Publico, of which Warren was the 
leading spirit, and in which, says Elliott, “the plans 
of the Sons of Liberty were matured.” As Henry 
Purkett used to say, he was present at the famous 
Tea Party as a spectator, and in disobedience to the 
order of the Master of the Lodge, who was actively 
present.’ 

As in Massachusetts, so throughout the Col- 
onies — the Masons were everywhere active in be- 
half of a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated 
to the proposition that all men are created equal.” 
Of the men who signed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the following are known to have been 


1For the full story, see “Reminiscences of the Green Dragon 
Tavern,” in Centennial Memorial of St. Andrew's Lodge, 1870. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 225 


members of the order: William Hooper, Benjamin 
Franklin, Matthew Thornton, William Whipple, 
John Hancock, Philip Livingston, Thomas Nelson; 
and no doubt others, if we had the Masonic records 
destroyed during the war. Indeed, it has been said 
that, with four men out of the room, the assembly 
could have been opened in form as a Masonic Lodge, 
on the Third Degree. Not only Washington,’ but 
nearly all of his generals, were Masons; such at 
least as Greene, Lee, Marion, Sullivan, Rufus and 
Israel Putnam, Edwards, Jackson, Gist, Baron 
Steuben, Baron De Kalb, and the Marquis de La- 
fayette who was made a Mason in one of the many 
military Lodges held in the Continental Army.’ If 
the history of those old camp-lodges could be writ- 
ten, what a story it would tell. Not only did they 
initiate such men as Alexander Hamilton and John 
Marshall, the immortal Chief Justice, but they made 
the spirit of Masonry felt in “times that try men’s 
souls’ *—-a spirit passing through picket-lines, 
eluding sentinels, and softening the horrors of war. 


1 Washington, the Man and the Mason, by C. H. Callahan. Jack- 
son, Polk, Fillmore, Buchanan, Johnson, Garfield, McKinley, Roose- 
velt, Taft, all were Masons. A long list may be found in Cyclo- 
pedia of Fraternities, by Stevens, article on “Freemasonry: Dis- 
tinguished Americans.” 

2Washington and his Masonic Compeers, by Randolph Hayden. 

8Thomas Paine, whose words these are, though not a Mason, 
has left us an essay on The Origin of Freemasonry. Few men have 
ever been more unjustly and cruelly maligned than this great patriot, 
who was the first to utter the name “United States,” and who, in- 


226 THE BUILDERS 


- Laying aside their swords, these Masons helped 
to lay wide and deep the foundations of that liberty 
under the law which has made this nation, of a 
truth, ‘the last great hope of man.’”’ Nor was it an 
accident, but a scene in accord with the fitness of 
things, that George Washington was sworn into 
office as the first President of the Republic by the 
Grand Master of New York, taking his oath on a 
Masonic Bible. It was a parable of the whole peri- 
od. If the Magna Charta demanded rights which 
government can grant, Masonry from the first as- 
serted those inalienable rights which man derives 
from God the Father of men. Never did this truth 
find sweeter voice than in the tones of the old Scotch 
fiddle on which Robert Burns, a Master Mason, 
sang, in lyric glee, of the sacredness of the soul, and 
the native dignity of humanity as the only basis of 
society and the state. That music went marching 
on, striding over continents and seas, until it found 
embodiment in the Constitution and laws of this 
nation, where today more than a million Masons are 
citizens. 

How strange, then, that Masonry should have 
been made the victim of the most bitter and baseless 
persecution, for it was nothing else, in the annals 


stead of being a sceptic, believed in “the religion in which all men 
agree’ — that is, in God, Duty, and the immortality of the soul. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 227 


of the Republic. Yet so it came to pass between 
1826 and 1845, in connection with the Morgan’* af- 
fair, of which so much has been written, and so little 
truth told. Alas, it was an evil hour when, as Gals- 
worthy would say, “men just feel something big and 
religious, and go blind to justice, fact, and reason.” 
Although Lodges everywhere repudiated and de- 
nounced the crime, if crime it was, and the Governor 
of New York, himself a Mason, made every effort to 
detect and punish those involved, the fanaticism 


1 William Morgan was a dissolute, nondescript printer in Batavia, 
New York, who, having failed in everything else, thought to make 
money by betraying the secrets of an order which his presence pol- 
luted. Foolishly misled, a few Masons had him arrested on a petty 
charge, got him out of the country, and apparently paid him to stay 
out. Had no attention been paid to his alleged exposure it would 
have fallen still-born from the press, like many another before it. 
Rumors of abduction started, then Morgan was said to have been 
thrown into Niagara River, whereas there is no proof that he was 
ever killed, much less murdered by Masons. Thurlow Weed and 
a pack of unscrupulous politicians took it up, and the rest was 
easy. One year later a body was found on the shore of Lake On- 
tario which Weed and the wife of Morgan identified —a year after- 
ward!—she, no doubt, having been paid to do so; albeit the wife 
of a fisherman named Munroe identified the same body as that of 
her husband drowned a week or so before. No matter; as Weed 
said, “It’s good enough Morgan until after the election” —a char- 
acteristic remark, if we may judge by his own portrait as drawn in 
his Autobiography. Politically, he was capable of anything, if he 
could make it win, and here he saw a chance of stirring up every 
vile and slimy thing in human nature for sake of office. (See a 
splendid review of the whole matter in History of Masonry, by 
Hughan and Stillson, also by Gould in vol. iv of his History.) 


228 THE BUILDERS 


would not be stayed: the mob-mood ruled. An 
Anti-Masonic political party* was formed, fed on 
frenzy, and the land was stirred from end to end. 
Even such a man as John Quincy Adams, of great 
credulity and strong prejudice, was drawn into the 
fray, and in a series of letters flayed Masonry as an 
enemy of society and a free state — forgetting that 
Washington, Franklin, Marshall, and Warren were 
members of the order! Meanwhile — and, verily, it 
was a mean while— Weed, Seward, Thaddeus 
Stevens, and others of their ilk, rode into power on 
the strength of it, as they had planned to do, de- 
feating Henry Clay for President, because he was 
a Mason — and, incidentally, electing Andrew Jack- 
son, another Mason! Let it be said that, if the Ma- 
sons found it hard to keep within the Compass, they 
at least acted on the Square. Finally the fury spent 
itself, leaving the order purged of feeble men who 
were Masons only in form, and a revival of Mason- 
ry followed, slowly at first, and then with great 
rapidity. 

No sooner had Masonry recovered from this or- 
deal than the dark clouds of Civil War covered the 
land like a pall — the saddest of all wars, dividing a 
nation one in arts and arms and historic memories, 


1Cyclopedia of Fraternities, by Stevens, article, “Anti-Mason- 
ry,” gives detailed account with many interesting facts. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 229 


and leaving an entail of blood and fire and tears. 
Let it be forever rembered that, while churches 
were severed and states were seceding, the Masonic 
order remained unbroken in that wild and fateful 
hour. An effort was made to involve Masonry in 
the strife, but the wise counsel of its leaders, North 
and South, prevented the mixing of Masonry with 
politics; and while it could not avert the tragedy, it 
did much to mitigate the woe of it — building rain- 
bow bridges of mercy and goodwill from army to 
army. ‘Though passion may have strained, it could 
not break the tie of Masonic love, which found a 
ministry on red fields, among the sick, the wounded, 
and those in prison; and many a man in gray plant- 
ed a Sprig of Acacia on the grave of a man who 
wore the blue. Some day the writer hopes to tell 
that story, or a part of it, and then men will under- 
stand what Masonry is, what it means, and what it 
can do to heal the hurts of humanity.’ 


1 Following the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, there was a 
Lodge meeting in town, and “Yanks” and “Johnny Rebs” met and 
mingled as friends under the Square and Compass. Where else 
could they have done so? (Tennessee Mason). When the Union 
army attacked Little Rock, Ark., the commanding officer, Thomas 
H. Benton— Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Iowa — threw 
a guard about the home of General Albert Pike, to protect his 
Masonic library. Marching through burning Richmond, a Union 
ofcer saw the familiar emblems over a hall. He put a guard about 
the Lodge room, and that night, together with a number of Con- 
federate Masons, organized a society for the relief of widows and 


230 THE BUILDERS 


Even so it has been, all through our national his- 
tory, and today Masonry is worth more for the sanc- 
tity and safety of this republic than both its army 
and its navy. At every turn of events, when the 
rights of man have been threatened by enemies obvi- 
ous or insidious, it has stood guard — its altar lights 
like signal fires along the heights of liberty, keeping 
watch. Not only in our own land, but everywhere 
over the broad earth, when men have thrown off the 
yoke of tyranny, whether political or spiritual, and 
demanded the rights that belong to manhood, they 
have found a friend in the Masonic order — as did 
Mazzini and Garibaldi in Italy. Nor must we be 
less alert and vigilant today when, free of danger 
of foes from without, our republic is imperiled by 
the negligence of indifference, the seduction of lux- 
ury, the machinations of politicians, and the shadow 
of a passion-clouded, impatient discontent, whose 
end is madness and folly; lest the most hallowed of 
all liberties be lost. 

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
From out the storied past, and used 


orphans left destitute by the war (Washington, the Man and the Ma- 
son, Callahan). But for the kindness of a brother Mason, who saved 
the life of a young soldier of the South, who was a prisoner of 
war at Rock Island, Ill., the present writer would never have been 
born, much less have written this book. That young soldier was 
my father! Volumes of such facts might be gathered in proof of 
the gracious ministry of Masonry in those awful years. 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 231 


Within the present, but transfused 
Through future time by power of thought. 


V 

Truly, the very existence of such a great historic 
fellowship in the quest and service of the Ideal is.a 
fact eloquent beyond all words, and to be counted 
among the precious assets of humanity. Forming 
one vast society of free men, held together by volun- 
tary obligations, it covers the whole globe from 
Egypt to India, fromItaly toEngland, from America 
to Australia, and the isles of the sea; from London to 
Sidney, from Chicago to Calcutta. In all civilized 
lands, and among folk of every creed worthy of the 
name, Masonry is found —and everywhere it up- 
holds all the redeeming ideals of humanity, making 
all good things better by its presence, like a stream 
underflowing a meadow." Also, wherever Masonry 
flourishes and is allowed to build freely after its 
divine design, liberty, justice, education, and true 
religion flourish; and where it is hindered, they suf- 
fer. Indeed, he who would reckon the spiritual pos- 
sessions of the race, and estimate the forces that 
make for social beauty, national greatness, and hu- 
man welfare, must take account of the genius of 


1Cyclopedia of Fraternities, by Stevens (last edition), article, 
“Free Masonry,” pictures the extent of the order, with maps and 
diagrams showing its world-wide influence. 


232 THE BUILDERS 


Masonry and its ministry to the higher life of the 
race. 

Small wonder that such an order has won to its 
fellowship men of the first order of intellect, men 
of thought and action in many lands, and every walk 
and work of life: soldiers like Wellington, Blucher, 
and Garibaldi; philosophers like Krause, Fichte, and 
John Locke; patriots like Washington and Mazzini; 
writers like Walter Scott, Voltaire, Steele, Lessing, 
Tolstoi; poets like Goethe, Burns, Byron, Kipling, 
Pike; musicians like Haydn and Mozart — whose 
opera, The Magic Flute, has a Masonic motif; mas- 
ters of drama like Forrest and Edwin Booth; editors 
such as Bowles, Prentice, Childs, Grady; ministers 
of many communions, from Bishop Potter to Robert 
Collyer; statesmen, philanthropists, educators, jur- 
ists, men of science — Masons many,’ whose names 
shine like stars in the great world’s crown of intel- 


1 Space does not permit a survey of the literature of Masonry, 
still less of Masonry in literature. (Findel has two fine chapters on 
the literature of the order, but he wrote, in 1865, History of Mason- 
ry.) For traces of Masonry in literature, there is the famous chap- 
ter in War and Peace, by Tolstoi; Mon Oncle Sosthenes, by Mau- 
passant; Nathan the Wise, and Ernest and Falk, by Lessing; the 
Masonic poems of Goethe, and many hints in Wilhelm Meister; the 
writings of Herder (Classic Period of German Letters, Findel), 
The Lost Word, by Henry Van Dyke; and, of course, the poetry of 
Burns. 
~ Masonic phrases and allusions— often almost too revealing — 
are found all through the poems and stories of Kipling. Besides 


UNIVERSAL MASONRY 233 


lectual and spiritual glory. What other order has 
ever brought together men of such diverse type, 
temper, training, interest, and achievement, uniting 
them at an altar of prayer in the worship of God and 
the service of man? 

For the rest, if by some art one could trace those 
invisible influences which move to and fro like 
shuttles in a loom, weaving the network of laws, 
reverences, sanctities which make the warp and 
woof of society — giving to statutes their dignity 
and power, to the gospel its opportunity, to the home 
its canopy of peace and beauty, to the young an en- 
shrinement of inspiration, and to the old a mantle of 
protection; if one had such art, then he might tell 
the true story of Masonry. Older than any living 
religion, the most widespread of all orders of men, 
it toils for liberty, friendship, and righteousness; 
binding men with solemn vows to the right, uniting 
them upon the only basis upon which they can meet 
without reproach—like _those fibers running 
through the glaciers, along which sunbeams journey, 
melting the frozen mass and sending it to the val- 


the poem The Mother Lodge, so much admired, there is The Widow 
of Windsor, such stories as With the Main Guard, The Winged 
Hats, Hal o’ the Draft, The City Walls, On the Great Wall, many 
examples in Kim, also in Traffics and Discoveries, Puck of Pook’s 
Hill, and, by no means least, The Man Who Would be King, one 
of the great short stories of the world. 


234 THE BUILDERS 


leys below in streams of blessing. Other fibers are 
there, but none is more far-ramifying, none more 
tender, none more responsive to the Light than the 
mystical tie of Masonic love. 

Truth will triumph. Justice will yet reign from 
sun to sun, victorious over cruelty and evil. Finally 
Love will rule the race, casting out fear, hatred, 
and all unkindness, and pity will heal the old hurt 
and heart-ache of humanity. There is nothing in 
history, dark as much of it is, against the ultimate 
fulfilment of the prophetic vision of Robert Burns — 
the Poet Laureate of Masonry: 


Then let us pray, that come it may — 
As come it will, for a’ that — 


That man to man, the world o’er 
Shall brothers be, for a’ that. 


Part I11—Interpretation 


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WHAT IS MASONRY 


I am afraid you may not consider it an alto- 
gether substantial concern. It has to be seen ina 
certain way, under certain conditions. Some 
people never see tt at all. You must understand, 
this 1s no dead pile of stones and unmeaning tim- 
ber. It ts a LIVING thing. 

When you enter it you hear a sound — a sound 
as of some mighty poem chanted. Listen long 
enough, and you will learn that it is made up of 
the beating of human hearts, of the nameless 
music of men’s souls — that 1s, if you have ears 
to hear. If you have eyes, you will presently see 
the church itself —a looming mystery of many 
shapes and shadows, leaping sheer from floor to 
dome. The work of no ordinary builder! 

The pillars of it go up like the brawny trunks 
of heroes; the sweet flesh of men and women is 
molded about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable; 
the faces of little children laugh out from every 
corner stone; the terrible spans and arches of tt 
are the joined hands of comrades; and up in the 
heights and spaces are inscribed the numberless 
musings of all the dreamers of the world, It is 
yet building — building and built upon. 

Sometimes the work goes on in deep darkness; 
sometimes in blinding light; now under the bur- 
den of unutterable anguish; now to the tune of 
great laughter and herotc shoutings like the cry 
of thunder. Sometimes, in the silence of the 
night-time, one may hear the tiny hammerings of 
the comrades at work up in the dome — the com- 
rades that have climbed ahead. 

—C. R. Kennepy, The Servant in the House 


CHAPTER I 


What is Masonry 


I 


HAT, then, is Masonry, and what is it trying 

to do in the world? According to one of the 

Old Charges, Masonry is declared to be an “ancient 
and honorable institution: ancient no doubt it is, as 
having subsisted from time immemorial; and honor- 
able it must be acknowledged to be, as by natural 
tendency it conduces to make those so who are obe- 
dient to its precepts. To so high an eminence has 
its credit been advanced that in every age Mon- 
archs themselves have been promoters of the. art, 
have not thought it derogatory from their dignity 
to exchange the scepter for the trowel, have patron- 
ized our mysteries and joined in our Assemblies.” 
While that eulogy is more than justified by sober 
facts, it does not tell us what Masonry is, much less 
its mission and ministry to mankind. If now we 
turn to the old, oft-quoted definition, we learn that 
Masonry is “‘a system of morality veiled in allegory 


240 THE BUILDERS 


b 


and illustrated by symbols.” That is, in so far, true 
enough, but it is obviously inadequate, the more so 
when it uses the word “peculiar” as describing the 
morality of Masonry; and it gives no hint of a 
world-encircling fellowship and its far-ramifying 
influence. Another definition has it that Masonry 
is “a science which is engaged in the search after 
divine truth;”’ * but that is vague, indefinite, and un- 
satisfactory, lacking any sense of the uniqueness of 
the Order, and as applicable to one science as to an- 
other. For surely all science, of whatever kind, is a 
search after divine truth, and a physical fact, as 
Agassiz said, is as sacred as a moral truth — every 
fact being the presence of God. 

Still another writer defines Masonry as “Friend- 
ship, Love, and Integrity — Friendship which rises 
superior to the fictitious distinctions of society, the 
prejudices of religion, and the pecuniary conditions 
of life; Love which knows no limit, nor inequality, 
nor decay; Integrity which binds man to the eternal 
law of duty.” * Such is indeed the very essence and 
spirit of Masonry, but Masonry has no monopoly of 


1 Symbolism of Freemasonry, by Dr. Mackey. 

2 History and Philosophy of Masonry, by A. C. L. Arnold, chap. 
xvi. To say of any man—of Socrates, for example — who had the 
spirit of Friendship and Integrity, that he was a Mason, is in a sense 
true, but it is misleading. Nevertheless, if a man have not that spirit, 
he is not a Mason, though he may have received the thirty-third de- 


gree. 


WHAT IS MASONRY 241 


that spirit, and its uniqueness consists, rather, in the 
form in which it seeks to embody and express the 
gracious and benign spirit which is the genius of all 
the higher life of humanity. Masonry is not every- 
thing; it is a thing as distinctly featured as a statue 
by Phidias or a painting by Angelo. Definitions, 
like delays, may be dangerous, but perhaps we can 
do no better than to adopt the words of the German 
Handbuch’ as the best description of it so far given: 
Masonry 1s. the activity of closely united men who, em- 
ployng symbolical forms borrowed principally from the 
mason’s trade and from architecture, work for the wel- 
fare of mankind, striving morally to ennoble themselves 
and others, and thereby to bring about a universal league 

of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit even now on a 

small scale, 

Civilization could hardly begin until man had 
learned to fashion for himself a settled habitation, 
and thus the earliest of all human arts and crafts, 
and perhaps also the noblest, is that of the builder. 
Religion took outward shape when men first reared 
an altar for their offerings, and surrounded it with 
a sanctuary of faith and awe, of pity and consola- 
tion, and piled a cairn to mark the graves where 
their dead lay asleep. History is no older than archi- 
tecture. How fitting, then, that the idea and art of 


1Vol. i, p. 320. The Handbuch is an encyclopedia of Masonry, 
published in 1900. See admirable review of it, 4. Q. C., xi, 64. 


242 THE BUILDERS 


building should be made the basis of a great order 
of men which has no other aim than the upbuilding 
of humanity in Faith, Freedom, and Friendship. 
Seeking to ennoble and beautify life, it finds in the 
common task and constant labor of man its sense of 
human unity, its vision of life as a temple “building 
and built upon,’’ and its emblems of those truths 
which make for purity of character and the stability 
of society. ‘Thus Masonry labors, linked with the 
constructive genius of mankind, and so long as it re- 
mains true to its Ideal no weapon formed against it 
can prosper. 

One of the most impressive and touching things 
in human history is that certain ideal interests have 
been set apart as especially venerated among all 
peoples. Guilds have arisen to cultivate the inter- 
ests embodied in art, science, philosophy, fraternity, 
and religion; to conserve the precious, hard-won in- 
heritances of humanity; to train men in their ser- — 
vice; to bring their power to bear upon the common 
life of mortals, and send through that common life 
the light and glory of the Ideal — as the sun shoots 
its transfiguring rays through a great dull cloud, 
evoking beauty from the brown earth. Such is Ma- 
sonry, which unites all these high interests and 
brings to their service a vast, world-wide fraternity 
of free and devout men, built upon a foundation of 


WHAT IS MASONRY 243 


spiritual faith and moral idealism, whose mission it 
is to make men friends, to refine and exalt their 
lives, to deepen their faith and purify their dream, 
to turn them from the semblance of life to homage 
for truth, beauty, righteousness, and character. 
More than an institution, more than a tradition, 
more than a society, Masonry is one of the forms of 
the Divine Life upon earth. No one may ever hope 
to define a spirit so gracious, an order so benign, an 
influence so prophetic of the present and future up- 
building of the race. 

There is a common notion that Masonry is a se- 
cret society, and this idea is based on the secret rites 
used in its initiations, and the signs and grips by 
which its members recognize each other. ‘Thus it 
has come to pass that the main aims of the Order 
are assumed to be a secret policy or teaching,* where- 


1 Much has been written about the secrecy of Masonry. Hutchin- 
son, in his lecture on “The Secrecy of Masons,” lays all the stress 
upon its privacy as a shelter for the gentle ministry of Charity 
(Spirit of Masonry, lecture x). Arnold is more satisfactory in his 
essay on “The Philosophy of Mystery,” quoting the words of Car- 
lyle in Sartor Resartus: “Bees will not work except in darkness; 
thoughts will not work except in silence; neither will virtue work 
except in secrecy” (History and Philosophy of Masonry, chap. 
xxi). But neither writer seems to realize the psychology and peda- 
gogy of secrecy — the value of curiosity, of wonder and expectation, 
in the teaching of great truths deemed commonplace because old. 
Even in that atmosphere, the real secret of Masonry remains hidden 
to many —as sunlight hides the depths of heaven. 


244 THE BUILDERS 


as its one great secret is that it has no secret. Its 
principles are published abroad in its writings; its 
purposes and laws are known, and the times and 
places of its meetings. Having come down from 
dark days of persecution, when all the finer things 
sought the protection of seclusion, if it still adheres 
to secret rites, it is not in order to hide the truth, 
but the better to teach it more impressively, to train 
men in its pure service, and to promote union and 
amity upon earth. Its signs and grips serve as a 
kind of universal language, and still more as a gra- 
cious cover for the practice of sweet charity — mak- 
ing it easier to help a fellow man in dire plight with- 
out hurting his self-respect. If a few are attracted 
to it by curiosity, all remain to pray, finding them- 
selves members of a great historic fellowship of the 
seekers and finders of God.’ It is old because it is 
true; had it been false it would have perished long 
ago. When all men practice its simple precepts, the 
innocent secrets of Masonry will be laid bare, its 
mission accomplished, and its labor done. 


Mi 
Recalling the emphasis of the foregoing pages, it 
need hardly be added that Masonry is in no sense a 


1 Read the noble chapter on “Prayer as a Masonic Obligation,” in 
Practical Masonic Lectures, by Samtel Lawrence (lecture x). 


WHAT IS MASONRY 245 


political party, still less a society organized for social 
agitation. Indeed, because Masonry stands apart 
from partisan feud and particular plans of social re- 
form, she has been held up to ridicule equally by the 
unthinking, the ambitious, and the impatient. Her 
critics on this side are of two kinds. ‘There are 
those who hold that the humanitarian ideal is an 
error, maintaining that human nature has no moral 
aptitude, and can be saved only by submission to a 
definite system of dogma. Then there are those who 
look for salvation solely in political action and social 
agitation, who live in the delusion that man can be 
made better by passing laws and counting votes, and 
to whom Masonry has nothing to offer because in its 
ranks it permits no politics, much less party rancor. 
Advocates of the first view have fought Masonry 
from the beginning with the sharpest weapons, 
while those who hold the second view regard it with 
contempt, as a thing useless and not worth fighting.* 

Neither adversary understands Masonry and its 
cult of the creative love for humanity, and of each 
man for his fellow, without which no dogma is of 
any woich; lacking which, the best laid plans of 
social seers “gang aft aglee.”” Let us look at things 
as they are. That we must press forward towards 


1 Read a thoughtful “Exposition of Freemasonry,” by Dr. Paul 
Carus, Open Court, May, 1913. 


246 THE BUILDERS 


righteousness — that we must hunger and thirst 
after a social life that is true and pure, just and mer- 
ciful — all will agree; but they are blind who do not 
see that the way is long and the process slow. What 
is it that so tragically delays the march of man to- 
ward the better and wiser social order whereof our 
prophets dream? Our age, like the ages gone be- 
fore, is full of schemes of every kind for the reform 
and betterment of mankind. Why do they not suc- 
ceed? Some fail, perhaps, because they are impru- 
dent and ill-considered, in that they expect too much 
of human nature and do not take into account the 
stubborn facts of life. But why does not the wisest 
and noblest plan do more than half what its advo- 
cates hope and pray and labor so heroically to bring 
about? Because there are not enough men fine 
enough of soul, large enough of sympathy, sweet 
enough of spirit, and noble enough of nature to 
make the dream come true! 

There are no valid arguments against a great- 
spirited social justice but this — that men will not. 
Indolence, impurity, greed, injustice, meanness of 
spirit, the aggressiveness of authority, and above all 
jealousy — these are the real obstacles that thwart 
the nobler social aspiration of humanity. There are 
too many men like The Master-Builder who tried to 
build higher than any one else, without regard to 


WHAT IS MASONRY 247 


others, all for his own selfish glory. Ibsen has shown 
us how The Pillars of Society, resting on rotten 
foundations, came crashing down, wounding the in- 
nocent in their wreck. Long ago it was said that | 
“through wisdom is an house builded, and by under- 
standing it is established; and by knowledge shall 
the chambers be filled with pleasant and precious 
riches.” * ‘Time has shown that the House of Wis- 
dom must be founded upon righteousness, justice, 
purity, character, faith in God and love of man, else 
it will fall when the floods descend and the winds 
beat upon it. What we need to make our social 
dreams come true is not more laws, not more dog- 
mas, not less liberty, but better men, cleaner minded, 
more faithful, with loftier ideals and more heroic in- 
tegrity; men who love the right, honor the truth, 
worship purity, and prize liberty — upright men _ 
who meet all horizontals at a perfect angle, assur- 
ing the virtue and stability of the social order. 

Therefore, when Masonry, instead of identifying 
itself with particular schemes of reform, and thus 
becoming involved in endless turmoil and dispute, 
estranging men whom she seeks to bless, devotes all 
her benign energy and influence to ennobling the 
souls of men, she is doing fundamental work in be- 
half of all high enterprises. By as much as she suc- 
1 Proverbs 24:3, 4. 


248 THE BUILDERS 


ceeds, every noble cause succeeds; by as much as she 
fails, everything fails! By its ministry to the in- 
dividual man — drawing him into the circle of a 
great friendship, exalting his faith, refining his 
ideals, enlarging his sympathies, and setting his feet 
in the long white path — Masonry best serves so- 
ciety and the state." While it is not a reformatory, 
it is a center of moral and spiritual power, and its 
power is used, not only to protect the widow and or- 
phan, but also, and still more important, to remove 
the cause of their woe and need by making men just, 
gentle, and generous to all their fellow mortals. 
Who can measure such a silent, persistent, unrest- 
ing labor; who can describe its worth in a world of 
feud, of bitterness, of sorrow! 

No one needs to be told that we are on the eve, if 
not in the midst, of a most stupendous and bewilder- 
ing revolution of social and industrial life. It shakes 
England today. It makes France tremble tomor- 
row. It alarms America next week. Men want 


1 While Masonry abjures political questions and disputes in its 
Lodges, it is all the while training good citizens, and through the 
quality of its men it influences public life—as Washington, Frank- 
lin, and Marshall carried the spirit of Masonry into the organic law 
of this republic. It is not politics that corrupts character; it is bad 
character that corrupts politics — and by building men up to spiritual 
faith and character, Masonry is helping to build up a state that will 
endure the shocks of time; a nobler structure than ever was wrought 
of mortar and marble (The Principles of Freemasonry in the Life 
of Nations, by Findel). 


WHAT IS MASONRY 249 


shorter hours, higher wages, and better homes — of »,,, 


course they do—~ but they need, more than these 
things, /to know and love each other; for the ques- 
tions in dispute can never be settled in an air of hos- 
tility. If they are ever settled at all, and settled 
right, it must be in an atmosphere of mutual recog- 
nition and respect, such as Masonry seeks to create 
and make prevail. Whether it be a conflict of na- 
tions, or a clash of class with class, appeal must be 
made to intelligence and the moral sense, as befits 
the dignity of man. Amidst bitterness and strife - 
Masonry brings men of every rank and walk of life 
together as men, and nothing else, at an altar where 
they can talk and not fight, discuss and not dispute, 
and each may learn the point of view of his fellow. - 
Other hope there is none save in this spirit of friend- 
ship and fairness, of democracy and the fellowship of 
man with man. Once this spirit has its way with 
mankind, it will bring those brave, large reconstruc- 
tions, those profitable abnegations and brotherly 
feats of generosity that will yet turn human life into 
a glad, beautiful, and triumphant cooperation all 
round this sunlit world. 

Surely the way of Masonry is wise. Instead of 
becoming only one more factor in a world of fac- 
tional feud, it seeks to remove all hostility which may 
arise from social, national, or religious differences. 
It helps to heal the haughtiness of the rich and the 


250 THE BUILDERS 


envy of the poor, and tends to establish peace on 
earth by allaying all fanaticism and hatred on ac- 
count of varieties of language, race, creed, and even 
color, while striving to make the wisdom of the past 
available for the culture of men in faith and purity. 
Not a party, not a sect, not a cult, it is a great order 
of men selected, initiated, sworn, and trained to 
make sweet reason and the will of God prevail! 
Against the ancient enmities and inhumanities of 
the world it wages eternal war, without vengeance, 
without violence, but by softening the hearts of men 
and inducing a better spirit. Apparitions of a day, 
here for an hour and tomorrow gone, what is our 
puny warfare against evil and ignorance compared 
with the warfare which this venerable Order has 
been waging against them for ages, and will con- 
tinue to wage after we have fallen into dust! 


II] 


Masonry, as it is much more than a political party 
or a social cult, is also more than a church — unless 
we use the word church as Ruskin used it when he 
said: ““There is a true church wherever one hand 
meets another helpfully, the only holy or mother 
church that ever was or ever shall be!” It is true 
that Masonry is not a religion, but it is Religion, a 
worship in which all good men may unite, that each 


NNT i 


WHAT IS MASONRY 251 


may share the faith of all. Often it has been ob- 
jected that some men leave the Church and enter the 
Masonic Lodge, finding there a religious home. 
Even so, but that may be the fault, not of Masonry, 
but of the Church so long defamed by bigotry and 
distracted by sectarian feud, and which has too often 
made acceptance of abstract dogmas a test of its fel- 
lowship.” Naturally many fine minds have been 
estranged from the Church, not because they were 
irreligious, but because they were required to be- 
lieve what it was impossible for them to believe; 
and, rather than sacrifice their integrity of soul, they 
have turned away from the last place from which a 
man should ever turn away. No part of the ministry 
of Masonry is more beautiful and wise than its ap- 
peal, not for tolerance, but for fraternity; not for 
uniformity, but for unity of spirit amidst varieties 


1 Not a little confusion has existed, and still exists, in regard to 
the relation of Masonry to religion. Dr. Mackey said that old Craft- 
masonry was sectarian (Symbolism of Masonry); but it was not 
more so than Dr. Mackey himself, who held the curious theory that 
the religion of the Hebrews was genuine and that of the Egyptians 
spurious. Nor is there any evidence that Craft-masonry was sec- 
tarian, but much to the contrary, as has been shown in reference to - 
the invocations in the Old Charges. At any rate, if it was ever sec- 
tarian, it ceased to be so with the organization of the Grand Lodge 
of England. Later, some of the chaplains of the order sought to 
identify Masonry with Christianity, as Hutchinson did—and even 
Arnold in his chapter on “Christianity and Freemasonry” (History 
and Philosophy of Masonry). All this confusion results from a 


252 THE BUILDERS 


of outlook and opinion. Instead of criticizing Ma- 
sonry, let us thank God for one altar where no man 
is asked to surrender his liberty of thought and be- 
come an indistinguishable atom in a mass of sec- 
tarian agglomeration. What a witness to the worth 
of an Order that it brings together men of all creeds 
in behalf of those truths which are greater than all © 
sects, deeper than all doctrines — the glory and the 
hope of man! 

While Masonry is not a church, it has religiously 
preserved some things of highest importance to the 
Church — among them the right of each individual 
soul to its own religious faith. Holding aloof from 
separate sects and creeds, it has taught all of them 


misunderstanding of what religion is. Religions are many; religion 
is one— perhaps we may say one thing, but that one thing includes 
everything —the life of God in the soul of man, which finds ex- 
pression in all the forms which life and love and duty take. This 
conception of religion shakes the poison out of all our wild flowers, 
and shows us that it is the inspiration of all scientific inquiry, all 
striving for liberty, all virtue and charity; the spirit of all thought, 
the motif of all great music, the soul of all sublime literature. The 
church has no monopoly of religion, nor did the Bible create it. 
Instead, it was religion—the natural and simple trust of the soul 
in a Power above and within it, and its quest of a right relation to 
that Power — that created the Bible and the Church, and, indeed, all 
our higher human life. The soul of man is greater than all books, 
deeper than all dogmas, and more enduring than all institutions. 
Masonry seeks to free men from a limiting conception of religion, 
and thus to remove one of the chief causes of sectarianism. It is 
itself one of the forms of beauty wrought by the human soul under 
the inspiration of the Eternal Beauty, and as such is religious. 


WHAT IS MASONRY 253 


how to respect and tolerate each other; asserting a 
principle broader than any of them —the sanctity 
of the soul and the duty of every man to revere, or 
at least to regard with charity, what is sacred to his 
fellows. It is like the crypts underneath the old 
cathedrals — a place where men of every creed who 
long for something deeper and truer, older and 
newer than they have hitherto known, meet and 
unite. Having put away childish things, they find 
themselves made one by a profound and childlike 
faith, each bringing down into that quiet crypt his 
own pearl of great price — 

The Hindu his innate disbelief in this world, and his 
unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist his 
perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his gen- 
tleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his 
sobriety; the Jew his clinging, through good and evil 
days, to the one God who loveth righteousness, and whose 
name is “I AM;;” the Christian, that which is better than 
all, if those who doubt it would try it — our love of God, 
call Him what you will, manifested in our love of man, 
our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and 
undying love. Who knows but that the crypt of the past 
may become the church of the future? ? 


Of no one age, Masonry belongs to all ages; of no 
one religion, it finds great truths in all religions. 
Indeed, it holds that truth which is common to all 
elevating and benign religions, and is the basis of 

1Chips from a German Workshop, by Max Miller. 


254 THE BUILDERS 


each; that faith which underlies all sects and over- 
arches all creeds, like the sky above and the river bed 
below the flow of mortal years. It does not under- 
take to explain or dogmatically to settle those ques- 
tions or solve those dark mysteries which out-top 
human knowledge. Beyond the facts of faith it does 
not go. With the subtleties of speculation concern- 
ing those truths, and the unworldly envies growing 
out of them, it has not todo. There divisions begin, 
and Masonry was not made to divide men, but to 
unite them, leaving each man free to think his own 
thought and fashion his own system of ultimate 
truth. All its emphasis rests upon two extremely 
simple and profound principles — love of God and 
love of man. Therefore, all through the ages it has 
been, and is today, a meeting place of differing 
minds, and a prophecy of the final union of all rev- 
erent and devout souls. 

Time was when one man framed a dogma and de- 
clared it to be the eternal truth. Another man did 
the same thing, with a different dogma; then the 
two began to hate each other with an unholy hatred, 
each seeking to impose his dogma upon the other — 
and that is an epitome of some of the blackest pages 
of history. Against those old sectarians who sub- 
stituted intolerance for charity, persecution for 
friendship, and did not love God because they hated 


WHAT IS MASONRY 255 


their neighbors, Masonry made eloquent protest, 
putting their bigotry to shame by its simple insight, 
and the dignity of its golden voice. A vast change 
of heart is now taking place in the religious world, 
by reason of an exchange of thought and courtesy, 
and a closer personal touch, and the various sects, 
so long estranged, are learning to unite upon the 
things most worth while and the least open to de- 
bate. That is to say, they are moving toward the 
Masonic position, and when they arrive Masonry 
will witness a scene which she has prophesied for 
ages. 

At last, in the not distant future, the old feuds of 
the sects will come to an end, forgotten in the dis- 
covery that the just, the brave, the true-hearted are 
everywhere of one religion, and that when the masks 
of misunderstanding. are taken off they know and 
love one another. Our little dogmas will have their 
day and cease to be, lost in the vision of a truth so 
great that all men are one in their littleness; one 
also in their assurance of the divinity of the soul and 
“the kindness of the veiled Father of men.” ‘Then 
men of every name will ask, when they meet: 

Not what is your creed? 

But what is your need? 
High above all dogmas that divide, all bigotries that 
blind, all bitterness that beclouds, will be written the 


256 THE BUILDERS 


simple words of the one eternal religion — the 
Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the 
moral law, the golden rule, and the hope of a life 
everlasting ! 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 


Masonry directs us to divest ourselves of con- 
fined and bigoted notions, and teaches us, that 
Humanity ts the soul of Religion. We never suf- 
fer any religious disputes in our Lodges, and, 
as Masons, we only pursue the universal religion, 
the Religion of Nature. Worshipers of the God 
of Mercy, we believe that in every nation, he that 
feareth Him and worketh righteousness 1s accept- 
ed of Him. All Masons, therefore, whether Chris- 
tians, Jews, or Mahomedans, who violate not the 
rule of right, written by the Almighty upon the 
tables of the heart, who vo fear Him, and work 
righteousness, we are to acknowledge as brethren; 
and, though we take different roads, we are not 
to be angry with, or persecute each other on that 
account. We mean to travel to the same place; 
we know that the end of our journey is the same; 
and we affectionately hope to meet in the Lodge 
of perfect happiness. How lovely is an mstitu- 
tion fraught with sentiments like these! How 
agreeable must it be to Him who 1s seated on a 
throne of Everlasting Mercy, to the God who is 
no respecter of persons! 

— Wo. Hurcuinson, The Spirit of Masonry 


CHAPTER II 


The Masonic Philosophy 


AST any philosophy in thee, Shepherd?” * was 

the question of Touchstone in the Shake- 
speare play; and that is the question we must always 
ask ourselves. Long ago Kant said that it is the 
mission of philosophy, not to discover truth, but to 
set it in order, to seek out the rhythm of things and 
their reason for being. Beginning in wonder, it 
sees the familiar as if it were strange, and its mind 
is full of the air that plays round every subject. 
Spacious, humane, eloquent, it is “a blend of science, 


1As You Like It (act ii, scene ii). Shakespeare makes no refer- 
ence to any secret society, but some of his allusions suggest that he 
knew more than he wrote. He describes “The singing Masons build- 
ing roofs of gold” (Henry V, act i, scene ii), and compares them 
to a swarm of bees at work. Did he know what the bee hive means 
in the symbolism of Masonry? (Read an interesting article on 
“Shakespeare and Freemasonry,” American Freemason, January, 
1912.) It reminds one of the passage in the Complete Angler, by 
Isaak Walton, in which the gentle fisherman talks about the meaning 
of Pillars in language very like that used in the Old Charges. But 
Hawkins in his edition of the Angler recalls that Walton was a 
friend of Elias Ashmole, and may have learned of Masonry from 
him. (A Short Masonic History, by F. Armitage, vol. ii, chap. 3.) 


260 THE BUILDERS 


poetry, religion and logic” *—a softening, enlarg- 
ing, ennobling influence, giving us a wider and 
clearer outlook, more air, more room, more light, 
and more background. 

When we look at Masonry in this large and mel- 
low light, it is like a stately old cathedral, gray with 
age, rich in associations, its steps worn by innumer- 
able feet of the living and the dead — not piteous, 
but strong and enduring. Entering its doors, we 
wonder at its lofty spaces, its windows with the dim- 
ness and glory of the Infinite behind them, the 
spring of its pillars, the leap of its arches, and its 
roof inlaid with stars. Inevitably we ask, whence 
came this temple of faith and friendship, and what 
does it mean — rising lightly as a lyric, uplifted by 
the hunger for truth and the love for beauty, and 
exempt from the shock of years and the ravages of 
decay? What faith builded this home of the soul, 
what philosophy underlies and upholds it? Truly 
did Longfellow sing of The Builders: 

In the elder years of art, 
Builders wrought with greatest care 


Each minute and hidden part, 
For the gods see everywhere. 


I 


If we examine the foundations of Masonry, we 
find that it rests upon the most fundamental of all 
1 Some Problems of Philosophy, by William James. 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 261 


truths, the first truth and the last, the sovereign and 
supreme Reality. Upon the threshold of its Lodges 
every man, whether prince or peasant, is asked to 
confess his faith in God the Father Almighty, the 
Architect and Master-Builder of the Universe.* 
That is not a mere form of words, but the deepest 
and most solemn affirmation that human lips can 


1In 1877 the Grand Orient of France removed the Bible from its 
altar and erased from its ritual all reference to Deity; and for so 
doing it was disfellowshiped by nearly every Grand Lodge in the 
world. The writer of the article on “Masonry” in the Catholic En- 
cyclopedia recalls this fact with emphasis; but he is much fairer to 
the Grand Orient than many Masonic writers have been. He under- 
stands that this does not mean that the Masons of France are atheistic, 
as that word is ordinarily used, but that they do not believe that 
there exist Atheists in the absolute sense of the word; and he quotes 
the words of Albert Pike: “A man who has a higher conception of 
God than those about him, and who denies that their conception ts 
God, is very likely to be called an Atheist by men who are really 
far less believers in God than he” (Morals and Dogma, p. 643). 
Thus, as Pike goes on to say, the early Christians, who said the 
heathen idols were no Gods, were accounted Atheists, and accord- 
ingly put to death. We need not hold a brief for the Grand Orient, 
but it behooves us to understand its position and point of view, lest 
we be found guilty of a petty bigotry in regard to a word when the 
reality is a common treasure. First, it was felt that France needed 
the aid of every man who was an enemy of Latin ecclesiasticism, in 
order to bring about a separation of Church and State; hence the 
attitude of the Grand Orient. Second, the Masons of France agree 
with Plutarch that no conception of God at all is better than a dark, 
distorted superstition which wraps men in terror; and they erased 
a word which, for many, was associated with an unworthy faith — 
the better to seek a unity of effort in behalf of liberty of thought and 
a loftier faith. (The Religion of Plutarch, by Oakesmith; also the 
Bacon essay on Superstition.) We may deem this unwise, but we 
ought at least to understand its spirit and purpose. 


262 THE BUILDERS 


make. To be indifferent to God is to be indifferent 
to the greatest of all realities, that upon which the 
aspiration of humanity rests for its uprising passion 
of desire. No institution that is dumb concerning 
the meaning of life and the character of the uni- 
verse, can last. It is a house built upon the sand, 
doomed to fall when the winds blow and floods beat 
upon it, lacking a sure foundation. No human fra- 
ternity that has not its inspiration in the Fatherhood 
of God, confessed or unconfessed, can long endure; 
it is a rope of sand, weak as water, and its fine senti- 
ment quickly evaporates. Life leads, if we follow 
its meanings and think in the drift of its deeper con- 
clusions, to one God as the ground of the world, and 
upon that ground Masonry lays her corner-stone. 
Therefore, it endures and grows, and the gates of 
hell cannot prevail against it! 

While Masonry is theocratic in its faith and phil- 
osophy,’ it does not limit its conception of the Divine, 
much less insist upon any one name for “the Name- 
less One of a hundred names.” Indeed, no feature 
of Masonry is more fascinating that its age-long 
quest of the Lost Word,’ the Ineffable Name; a 
quest that never tires, never tarries, knowing the 


1 Theocratic Philosophy of Freemasonry, by Oliver. 

2“History of the Lost Word,” by J. F. Garrison, appendix to 
Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, by G. F. Fort —one 
of the most brilliant Masonic books, both in scholarship and literary 
style. 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 263 


while that every name is inadequate, and all words 
are but symbols of a Truth too great for words — 
every letter of the alphabet, in fact, having been 
evolved from some primeval sign or signal of the 
faith and hope of humanity. Thus Masonry, so far 
from limiting the thought of God, is evermore in 
search of a more satisfying and revealing vision of 
the meaning of the universe, now luminous and love- 
ly, now dark and terrible; and it invites all men to 
unite in the quest — 
One in the freedom of the Truth, 
One in the joy of paths untrod, 
One in the soul’s perennial Youth, 
One in the larger thought of God. 
Truly the human consciousness of fellowship with 
the Eternal, under whatever name, may well hush 
all words, still more hush argument and anathema. 
Possession, not recognition, is the only thing im- 
portant; and if it is not recognized, the fault must 
surely be, in large part, our own. Given the one 
great experience, and before long kindred spirits 
will join in the Universal Prayer of Alexander 
Pope, himself a Mason: 
Father of all! in every age, 
In every clime adored, 
By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage, 
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! 


With eloquent unanimity our Masonic thinkers 


264 THE BUILDERS 


proclaim the unity and love of God — whence their 
vision of the ultimate unity and love of mankind — 
to be the great truth of the Masonic philosophy; the 
unity of God and the immortality of the soul.’ 
Amidst polytheisms, dualisms, and endless confu- 
sions, they hold it to have been the great mission of 
Masonry to preserve these precious truths, beside 
which, in the long result of thought and faith, all 
else fades and grows dim. Of this there is no doubt; 
and science has come at last to vindicate this wise . 
insight, by unveiling the unity of the universe with 
overwhelming emphasis. Unquestionably the uni- 
verse is an inexhaustible wonder. Still, it is a won- 
der, not a contradiction, and we can never find its 
rhythm save in the truth of the unity of all things 


1 Symbolism of Masonry, by Dr. Mackey (chap. i) and other 
books too many to name. It need hardly be said that the truth of 
the trinity, whereof the triangle is an emblem — though with Pythag- 
oras it was a symbol of holiness, of health—was never meant to 
contradict the unity of God, but to make it more vivid. As too often 
interpreted, it is little more than a crude tri-theism, but at its best 
it is not so. “God thrice, not three Gods,” was the word of St. Au- 
gustine (Essay on the Trinity), meaning three aspects of God— 
not the mathematics of His nature, but its manifoldness, its variety 
in unity. The late W. N. Clarke—who put more common sense 
into theology than any other man of his day — pointed out that, in 
our time, the old debate about the trinity is as dead as Caesar; the 
truth of God as a Father having taken up into itself the warmth, 
color, and tenderness of the truth of the trinity — which, as said on 
an earlier page, was a vision of God through the family (Christian 
Doctrine of God). 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 265 


in God. Other clue there is none. Down to this 
deep foundation Masonry digs for a basis of its 
temple, and builds securely. If this be false or un- 
stable, then is 

The pillar’d firmament rottenness, 

And earth’s base built on stubble. 

Upon the altar of Masonry lies the open Bible 
which, despite the changes and advances of the ages, 
remains the greatest Modern Book—the moral 
manual of civilization. All through its pages, 
through the smoke of Sinai, through “the forest of 
the Psalms,” through proverbs and parables, along 
the dreamy ways of prophecy, in gospels and epistles 
is heard the everlasting truth of one God who is 
love, and who requires of men that they love one 
another, do justly, be merciful, keep themselves un- 
spotted by evil, and walk humbly before Him in 
whose great hand they stand. There we read of the 
Man of Galilee who taught that, in the far distances 
of the divine Fatherhood, all men were conceived in 
love, and so are akin — united in origin, duty, and 
destiny. ‘Therefore we are to relieve the distressed, 
put the wanderer into his way, and divide our bread 
with the hungry, which is but the way of doing good 


1The Bible, the Great Source of Masonic Secrets and Observ- 
ances, by Dr. Oliver. No Mason need be told what a large place the 
Bible has in the symbolism, ritual, and teaching of the Order, and 
it has an equally large place in its literature. 


266 THE BUILDERS 


to ourselves; for we are all members of one great 
family, and the hurt of one means the injury of all. 

This profound and reverent faith from which, as 
from a never-failing spring, flow heroic devotedness, 
moral self-respect, authentic sentiments of frater- 
nity, inflexible fidelity in life and effectual consola- 
tion in death, Masonry has at all times religiously 
taught. Perseveringly it has propagated it through 
the centuries, and never more zealously than in our 
age. Scarcely a Masonic discourse is pronounced, 
or a Masonic lesson read, by the highest officer or 
the humblest lecturer, that does not earnestly teach 
this one true religion which is the very soul of Ma- 
sonry, its basis and apex, its light and power. Up- 
on that faith it rests; in that faith it lives and labors; 
and by that faith it will conquer at last, when the 
noises and confusions of today have followed the 
tangled feet that made them. 


ue 


Out of this simple faith grows, by inevitable logic, 
the philosophy which Masonry teaches in signs and 
symbols, in pictures and parables. Stated briefly, 
stated vividly, it is that behind the pageant of na- 
ture, in it and over it, there is a Supreme Mind 
which initiates, impels, and controls all. That be- 
hind the life of man and its pathetic story in history, 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 267 


in it and over it, there is a righteous Will, the intel- 
ligent Conscience of the Most High. In-short, that 
the first and last thing in the universe is mind, that 
the highest and deepest thing is conscience, and that 
the final reality is the absoluteness of love. Huigh- 
er than that faith cannot fly; deeper than that 
thought cannot dig. 

No deep is deep enough to show 

The springs whence being starts to flow. 

No fastness of the soul reveals 

Life’s subtlest impulse and appeals. 

We seem to come, we seem to go; 

But whence or whither who can know? 

Unemptiable, unfillable, 

It’s all in that one syllable — 

God! Only God. God first, God last. 

God, infinitesimally vast; 

God who is love, love which is God, 

The rootless, everflowering rod! 

There is but one real alternative to this philoso- 
phy. It is not atheism— which is seldom more 
than a revulsion from superstition — because the 
adherents of absolute atheism are so few, if any, 
and its intellectual position is too precarious ever to 
be a menace. An atheist, if such there be, is an 
orphan, a waif wandering the midnight streets of 
time, homeless and alone. Nor is the alternative 
agnosticism, which in the nature of things can be 


268 THE BUILDERS 


only a passing mood of thought, when, indeed, it is 
not a confession of intellectual bankruptcy, or a la- 
bor-saving device to escape the toil and fatigue of 
high thinking. It trembles in perpetual hesitation, 
like a donkey equi-distant between two bundles of 
hay, starving to death but unable to make up its 
mind. No; the real alternative is materialism, 
which played so large a part in philosophy fifty 
years ago, and which, defeated there, has betaken 
itself to the field of practical affairs. This is the 
dread alternative of a denial of the great faith of 
humanity, a blight which would apply a sponge to 
all the high aspirations and ideals of the race. Ac- 
cording to this dogma, the first and last things in 
the universe are atoms, their number, dance, com- 
binations, and growth. All mind, all will, all emo- 
tion, all character, all love is incidental, transitory, 
vain. The sovereign fact is mud, the final reality is 
dirt, and the decree of destiny is “dust unto dust!” 
Against this ultimate horror, it need hardly be 
said that in every age Masonry has stood as a wit- 
ness for the life of the spirit. In the war of the 
soul against dust, in the choice between dirt and 
Deity, it has allied itself on the side of the great 
idealisms and optimisms of humanity. It takes the 
spiritual view of life and the world as being most in 
accord with the facts of experience, the promptings 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 269 


of right reason, and the voice of conscience. In 
other words, it dares to read the meaning of the 
universe through what is highest in man, not 
through what is lower, asserting that the soul is 
akin to the Eternal Spirit, and that by a life of right- 
eousness its eternal quality is revealed." Upon this 
philosophy Masonry rests, and finds a rock beneath: 


On Him, this corner-stone we build, 
On Him, this edifice erect; 

And still, until this work’s fulfilled, 
May He the workman’s ways direct. 


Now, consider! All our human thinking, wheth- 
er it be in science, philosophy, or religion, rests for 
its validity upon faith in the kinship of man with 


1 Read the great argument of Plato in The Republic (book vi). 
The present writer does not wish to impose upon Masonry any dog- 
ma of technical Idealism, subjective, objective, or otherwise. No 
more than others does he hold to a static universe which unrolls in 
time a plan made out before, but to a world of wonders where life 
has the risk and zest of adventure. He rejoices in the New Ideal- 
ism of Rudolf Eucken, with its gospel of “an independent spiritual 
life” — independent, that is, of vicissitude —and its insistence upon 
the fact that the meaning of life depends upon our “building up 
within ourselves a life that is not of time” (Life’s Basis and Life’s 
Ideal). But the intent of these pages is, rather, to emphasize the 
spiritual view of life and the world as the philosophy underlying 
Masonry, and upon which it builds—the reality of the ideal, its 
sovereignty over our fragile human life, and the immutable neces- 
sity of loyalty to it, if we are to build for eternity. After all, as 
Plotinus said, philosophy “serves to point the way and guide the trav- 
eller ; the vision is for him who will see it.” But the direction means 
much to those who are seeking the truth to know it. 


270 THE BUILDERS 


God. If that faith be false, the temple of human 
thought falls to wreck, and behold! we know not 
anything and have no way of learning. But the 
fact that the universe is intelligible, that we can 
follow its forces, trace its laws, and make a map of 
it, finding the infinite even in the infinitesimal, shows 
that the mind of man is akin to the Mind that made 
it. Also, there are two aspects of the nature of man 
which lift him above the brute and bespeak his divine 
heredity. ‘They are reason and conscience, both of 
which are of more than sense and time, having their 
source, satisfaction, and authority in an unseen, 
eternal world. ‘That is to say, man is a being who, 
if not actually immortal, is called by the very law 
and necessity of his being to live as if he were im- 
mortal. Unless life be utterly abortive, having 
neither rhyme nor reason, the soul of man is itself 
the one sure proof and prophet of its own high faith. 

Consider, too, what it means to say that this 
mighty soul of man is akin to the Eternal Soul of all 
things. It means that we are not shapes of mud 
placed here by chance, but sons of the Most High, 
citizens of eternity, deathless as God our Father is 
deathless; and that there is laid upon us an abiding | 
obligation to live in a manner befitting the dignity 
of the soul. It means that what a man thinks, the 
purity of his feeling, the character of his activity 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY = _ 271 


and career are of vital and ceaseless concern to the 
Eternal. Here is a philosophy which lights up the 
universe like a sunrise, confirming the dim, dumb 
certainties of the soul, evolving meaning out of 
mystery, and hope out of what would else be despair. 
It brings out the colors of human life, investing our 
fleeting mortal years — brief at their longest, brok- 
en at its best— with enduring significance and 
beauty. It gives toeach of us, however humble and 
obscure, a place and a part in the stupendous his- 
torical enterprise; makes us fellow workers with the 
Eternal in His redemptive making of humanity, and 
binds us to do His will upon earth as it is done in 
heaven. It subdues the intellect; it softens the 
heart; it begets in the will that sense of self-respect 
without which high and heroic living cannot be. 
Such is the philosophy upon which Masonry builds; 
and from it flow, as from the rock smitten in the 
wilderness, those bright streams that wander 
through and water this human world of ours. 


Ii] 


Because this is so; because the human soul is akin 
to God, and is endowed with powers to which no 
one may set a limit, it is and of right ought to be 
free. Thus, by the logic of its philosophy, not less 
than the inspiration of its faith, Masonry has been 


272 THE BUILDERS 


_ impelled to make its historic demand for liberty of 
conscience, for the freedom of the intellect, and for 
the right of all men to stand erect, unfettered, and 
unafraid, equal before God and the law, each re- 
specting the rights of his fellows. What we have to 
remember is, that before this truth was advocated 
by any order, or embodied in any political constitu- 
tion, it was embedded in the will of God and the con- 
stitution of the human soul. Nor will Masonry 
ever Swerve one jot or tittle from its ancient and 
eloquent demand till all men, everywhere, are free 
in body, mind, and soul. As it is, Lowell was right 
when he wrote: 

We are not free: Freedom doth not consist 

in musing with our faces toward the Past 

While petty cares and crawling interests twist 

Their spider threads about us, which at last 

Grow strong as iron chains and cramp and bind 

In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind. 

Freedom is recreated year by year, 

In hearts wide open on the Godward side, 

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, 

In minds that sway the future like a tide. 

No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; 

She chooses men for her august abodes, 

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn. 


Some day, when the cloud of prejudice has been 
dispelled by the searchlight of truth, the world will 


HE MASONIC PRIR@OSORHY, |: 29% 


honor Masonry for its service to freedom of thought 
and the liberty of faith. No part of its history nas 
been more noble, no principle of its teaching has 
been more precious than its age-long demand for the 
right and duty of every soul to seek that light by 
which no man was ever injured, and that truth 
which makes man free. Down through the centu- 
ries — often in times when the highest crime was not 
murder, but thinking, and the human conscience was 
a captive dragged at the wheel of the ecclesiastical 
chariot — always and everywhere Masonry has 
stood for the right of the soul to know the truth, and 
to look up unhindered from the lap of earth into the 
face of God. Not freedom from faith, but freedom 
of faith, has been its watchword, on the ground that 
as despostism is the mother of anarchy, so bigoted 
dogmatism is the prolific source of scepticism — 
knowing, also, that our race has made its most rapid 
advance in those fields where it has been free the 
longest. 

Against those who would fetter thought in order 
to perpetuate an effete authority, who would give 
the skinny hand of the past a scepter to rule the as- 
piring and prophetic present, and seal the lips of 
living scholars with the dicta of dead scholastics, 
Masonry will never ground arms! Her plea is for 
government without tyranny and religion without 


274 THE BUILDERS 


superstition, and as surely as suns rise and set her 
fight will be crowned with victory. Defeat is im- 
_ possible, the more so because she fights not with 
force, still less with intrigue, but with the power of 
truth, the persuasions of reason, and the might of 
gentleness, seeking not to destroy her enemies, but 
to win them to the liberty of the truth and the fel- 
lowship of love. 

Not only does Masonry plead for that liberty of 
faith which permits a man to hold what seems to him 
true, but also, and with equal emphasis, for the lib- 
erty which faith gives to the soul, emancipating it 
from the despotism of doubt and the fetters of fear. 
Therefore, by every art of spiritual culture, it seeks 
to keep alive in the hearts of men a great and simple 
trust in the goodness of God, in the worth of life, 
and the divinity of the soul— a trust so apt to be 
crushed by the tramp of heavy years. Help a man 
to a firm faith in an Infinite Pity at the heart of this 
dark world, and from how many fears is he free! 
Once a temple of terror, haunted by shadows, his 
heart becomes “a cathedral of serenity and glad- 
ness,” and his life is enlarged and unfolded into 
richness of character and service. Nor is there any 
tyranny like the tyranny of time. Givea mana day 
to live, and he is like a bird in a cage beating against 
its bars. Give him a year in which to move to and 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 27s 


fro with his thoughts and plans, his purposes and 
hopes, and you have liberated him from the despot- 
ism of a day. Enlarge the scope of his life to fifty 
years, and he has a moral dignity of attitude and a 
sweep of power impossible hitherto. But give him 
a sense of Eternity; let him know that he plans and 
works in an ageless time; that above his blunders 
and sins there hovers and waits the infinite — then 
he is free! 

Nevertheless, if life on earth be worthless, so is 
immortality. The real question, after all, is not as 
to the quantity of life, but its quality — its depth, its 
purity, its fortitude, its fineness of spirit and gesture 
of soul. Hence the insistent emphasis of Masonry 
upon the building of character and the practice of 
righteousness; upon that moral culture without 
which man is rudimentary, and that spiritual vision 
without which intellect is the slave of greed or pas- 
sion. What makes a man great and freed of soul, 
here or anywhither, is loyalty to the laws of right, of 
truth, of purity, of love, and the lofty will of God. 
How to live is the one matter; and the oldest man in 
his ripe age has yet to seek a wiser way than to build, 
year by year, upon a foundation of faith in God, 
using the Square of justice, the Plumb-line of recti- 
tude, the Compass to restrain the passions, and the 
Rule by which to divide our time into labor, rest, 


276 THE BUILDERS 


and service to our fellows. Let us begin now and 
seek wisdom in the beauty of virtue and live in the 
light of it, rejoicing; so in this world shall we have 
a foregleam of the world to come — bringing down 
to the Gate in the Mist something that ought not to 
die, assured that, though hearts are dust, as God 
lives what is excellent is enduring! 


IV 


Bede the Venerable, in giving an account of the 
deliberations of the King of Northumberland and 
his counsellors, as to whether they should allow the 
Christian missionaries to teach a new faith to the 
people, recites this incident. After much debate, a 
gray-haired chief recalled the feeling which came 
over him on seeing a little bird pass through, on 
fluttering wing, the warm bright hall of feasting, 
while winter winds raged without. The moment 
of its flight was full of sweetness and light for the 
bird, but it was brief. Out of the darkness it flew, 
looked upon the bright scene, and vanished into the 
darkness again, none knowing whence it came nor 
whither it went. 

“Like this,” said the veteran chief, ‘“‘is human life. 
We come, our wise men cannot tell whence. We 
go, and they cannot tell whither. Our flight is 
brief. ‘Therefore, if there be anyone that can teach 


LHE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY | 277 


us more about it — in God’s name let us hear him!” 

Even so, let us hear what Masonry has to say in 
the great argument for the immortality of the soul. 
But, instead of making an argument linked and 
strong, it presents a picture — the oldest, if not the 
greatest drama in the world — the better to make 
men feel those truths which no mortal words can 
utter. It shows us the black tragedy of life in its 
darkest hour; the forces of evil, so cunning yet so 
stupid, which come up against the soul, tempting it 
to treachery, and even to the degredation of saving 
life by giving up all that makes life worth living; a 
tragedy which, in its simplicity and power, makes 
the heart ache and stand still. Then, out of the 
thick darkness there rises, like a beautiful white star, 
that in man which is most akin to God, his love of 
truth, his loyalty to the highest, and his willingness 
to go down into the night of death, if only virtue 
may live and shine like a pulse of fire in the evening 
sky. Here is the ultimate and final witness of our 
divinity and immortality — the sublime, death-defy- 
ing moral heroism of the human soul! Surely the 
eternal parodox holds true at the gates of the grave: 
he who loses his life for the sake of truth, shall find 
it anew! And here Masonry rests the matter, as- 
sured that since there is that in man which makes 
him hold to the moral ideal, and the integrity of his 


278 THE BUILDERS 


own soul, against all the brute forces of the world, 
the God who made man in His own image will not 
let him die in the dust! Higher vision it is not 
given us to see in the dim country of this world; 
deeper truth we do not need to know. 

Working with hands soon to be folded, we build 
up the structure of our lives from what our fingers 
can feel, our eyes can see, and our ears can hear. 
Till, in a moment — marvelous whether it come in 
storm and tears, or softly as twilight breath beneath 
unshadowed skies — we are called upon to yield our 
grasp of these solid things, and trust ourselves to 
the invisible Soul within us, which betakes itself 
along an invisible path into the Unknown. It is 
strange: a door opens into a new world; and man, 
child of the dust that he is, follows his adventurous 
Soul, as the Soul follows an inscrutable Power 
which is more elusive than the wind that bloweth 
where it listeth. Suddenly, with fixed eyes and 
blanched lips, we lie down and wait; and life, well- 
fought or wasted, bright or somber, lies behind us 
a dream that is dreamt, a thing that is no more. 
O Death, 


Thou hast destroyed it, 

The beautiful world, 

With powerful fist: 

In ruin ’tis hurled, 

By the blow of a demigod shattered! 
The scattered 


THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY =. 279 


Fragments into the void we carry, 
Deploring 

The beauty perished beyond restoring. 
Mightier 

For the children of men, 

Brightlier 

Build it again, 

In thine own bosom build it anew! 

O Youth, for whom these lines are written, fear 
not; fear not to believe that the soul is as eternal as 
the moral order that obtains in it, wherefore you 
shall forever pursue that divine beauty which has 
here so touched and transfigured you; for that is the 
faith of humanity, your race, and those who are 
fairest in its records. Let us lay it to heart, love it, 
and act upon it, that we may learn its deep meaning 
as regards others — our dear dead whom we think 
of, perhaps, every day —and find it easier to be 
brave and hopeful, even when we are sad. _ It is not 
a faith to be taken lightly, but deeply and in the quiet 
of the soul, if so that we may grow into its high 
meanings for ourselves, as life grows or declines. 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll! | 
Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 


The crest and crowning of all good, 
Life’s final star, is Brotherhood; 
For it will bring again to Earth 
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; 
Will send new light on every face, 
A kingly power upon the race. 
And till it comes we men are slaves, 
And travel downward to the dust of graves. 


Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: 
Blind creeds and kings have had their day. 
Break the dead branches from the path: 
Our hope is in the aftermath — 
Our hope 1s in heroic men, 
Star-led to build the world again. 
To this event the ages ran: 
Make way for Brotherhood — make way for Man. 
— EpwINn MARKHAM, Poems 


CHAPTER III 
The Spirit of Masonry 


I 


UTSIDE, of the home and the house of God 
there is nothing in this world more beautiful 
than the Spirit of Masonry. Gentle, gracious, and 
wise, its mission is to form mankind into a great 
redemptive brotherhood, a league of noble and free 
men enlisted in the radiant enterprise of working 
out in time the love and will of the Eternal. Who 
is sufficient to describe a spirit so benign? With 
what words may one ever hope to capture and detain 
that which belongs of right to the genius of poetry 
and song, by whose magic those elusive and impal- 
pable realities find embodiment and voice? 

With picture, parable, and stately drama, Ma- 
sonry appeals to lovers of beauty, bringing poetry 
and symbol to the aid of philosophy, and art to the 
service of character. Broad and tolerant in its 
teaching, it appeals to men of intellect, equally by 
the depth of its faith and its plea for liberty of 


284 THE BUILDERS 


thought — helping them to think things through to 
a more satisfying and hopeful vision of the meaning 
of life and the mystery of the world. But its pro- 
foundest appeal, more eloquent than all others, is to 
the deep heart of man, out of which are the issues 
of life and destiny. When all is said, it is as a man 
thinketh in his heart whether life be worth while or 
not, and whether he is a help or a curse to his race. 

Here lies the tragedy of our race: 

Not that men are poor; 

All men know something of poverty. 

Not that men are wicked; 

Who can claim to be good? 

Not that men are ignorant; 

Who can boast that he is wise? 

But that men are strangers! 

Masonry is Friendship — friendship, first, with 
the great Companion, of whom our own hearts tell 
us, who is always nearer to us than we are to our- 
selves, and whose inspiration and help is the great- 
est fact of human experience. To be in harmony 
with His purposes, to be open to His suggestions, 
to be conscious of fellowship with Him —this is ~ 
Masonry on its Godward side. Then, turning man- 
ward, friendship sums it allup. To be friends with 
all men, however they may differ from us in creed, 
color, or condition; to fill every human relation with 
the spirit of friendship; is there anything more or 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 28s 


better than this that the wisest and best of men can 
hope to do?* Such is the spirit of Masonry; such 
is its ideal, and if to realize it all at once is denied 
us, surely it means much to see it, love it, and labor 
to make it come true. 

Nor is this Spirit of Friendship a mere sentiment 
held by a sympathetic, and therefore unstable, fra- 
ternity, which would dissolve the concrete features 
of humanity into a vague blur of misty emotion. 
No; it has its roots ina profound philosophy which 
sees that the universe is friendly, and that men must 
learn to be friends if they would live as befits the 
world in which they live, as well as their own origin 
and destiny. For, since God is the life of all that 
was, is, and is to be; and since we are all born into 


1 Suggested by a noble passage in the Recollections of Wash- 
ington Gladden; and the great preacher goes on to say: “If the 
church could accept this truth—that Religion is Friendship — and 
build its own life upon it, and make it central and organic in all its 
teachings, should we not have a great revival of religion?” Indeed, 
yes; and of the right kind of religion, too! Walt Whitman found 
the basis of all philosophy, all religion, in “the dear love of man for 
his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend” (The Base of all 
Metaphysics). As for Masonic literature, it is one perpetual pzan 
in praise of the practice of friendship, from earliest time to our 
own day. Take, for example, the IJilustrations of Masonry, by 
Preston (first book, sect. i-x) ; and Arnold, as we have seen, defined 
Masonry as Friendship, as did Hutchinson (The Spirit of Masonry, 
lectures xi, xii). These are but two notes of a mighty anthem whose 
chorus is never hushed in the temple of Masonry! Of course, there 
are those who say that the finer forces of life are frail and foolish, 
but the influence of the cynic in the advance of the race is — nothing! 


286 THE BUILDERS 


the world by one high wisdom and one vast love, we 
are brothers to the last man of us, forever! For 
better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness 
and in health, and even after death us do part, all 
men are held together by ties of spiritual kinship, 
sons of one eternal Friend. Upon this fact human 
fraternity rests, and it is the basis of the plea of 
Masonry, not only for freedom, but for friendship 
among men. 

Thus friendship, so far from being a mush of con- 
cessions, is in fact the constructive genius of the unt- 
verse. Love is ever the Builder, and those who have 
done most to establish the City of God on earth have 
been the men who loved their fellow men. Once let 
this spirit prevail, and the wrangling sects will be 
lost in a great league of those who love in the service 
of those who suffer. No man will then revile the 
faith in which his neighbor finds help for today and 
hope for the morrow; pity will smite him mute, and 
love will teach him that God is found in many ways, 
by those who seek him with honest hearts. Once 
let this spirit rule in the realm of trade, and the law 
of the jungle will cease, and men will strive to build 
a social order in which all men may have opportunity 
“to live, and to live well,” as Aristotle defined the 
purpose of society. Here is the basis of that magical 
stability aimed at by the earliest artists when they 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 287 


sought to build for eternity, by imitating on earth 
the House of God. 


IT 


Our human history, saturated with blood and 
blistered with tears, is the story of man making 
friends with man. Society has evolved from a feud 
into a friendship by the slow growth of love and the 
welding of man, first to his kin, and then to his kind.’ 
The first men who walked in the red dawn of time 
lived every man for himself, his heart a sanctuary 
of suspicions, every man feeling that every other 
man was his foe, and therefore his prey. So there 
were war, strife, and bloodshed. Slowly there came 
to the savage a gleam of the truth that it is better to 
help than to hurt, and he organized clans and tribes. 
But tribes were divided by rivers and mountains, 
and the men on one side of the river felt that the 
men on the other side were their enemies. Again 
there were war, pillage, and sorrow. Great empires 
arose and met in the shock of conflict, leaving trails 
of skeletons across the earth. Then came the great 
roads, reaching out with their stony clutch and 
bringing the ends of the earth together. Men met, 
mingled, passed and repassed, and learned that hu- 
man nature is much the same everywhere, with 

1The Neighbor, by N. S. Shaler. 


288 THE BUILDERS 


hopes and fears in common. Still there were many 
things to divide and estrange men from each other, 
and the earth was full of bitterness. Not satisfied 
with natural barriers, men erected high walls of 
sect and caste, to exclude their fellows, and the men 
of one sect were sure that the men of all other sects 
were wrong — and doomed to be lost. Thus, when 
real mountains no longer separated man from man, 
mountains were made out of molehills — mountains 
of immemorial misunderstanding not yet moved into 
the sea! 

Barriers of race, of creed, of caste, of habit, of 
training and interest separate men today, as if some 
malign genius were bent on keeping man from his 
fellows, begetting suspicion, uncharitableness, and 
hate. Still there are war, waste, and woe! Yet all 
the while men have been unfriendly, and, therefore, 
unjust and cruel, only because they are unac- 
quainted. Amidst feud, faction, and folly, Masonry, 
the oldest and most widely spread order, toils in be- 
half of friendship, uniting men upon the only basis 
upon which they can ever meet with dignity. Each 
lodge is an oasis of equality and goodwill in a desert 
of strife, working to weld mankind into a great 
league of sympathy and service, which, by the terms 
of our definition, it seeks to exhibit even now on a 
small scale. At its altar men meet as man to man, 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 289 


without vanity and without pretense, without fear 
and without reproach, as tourists crossing the Alps 
tie themselves together, so that if one slip all may 
hold him up. No tongue can tell the meaning of 
such a ministry, no pen can trace its influence in 
melting the hardness of the world into pity and glad- 
ness. 

The Spirit of Masonry! He who would describe 
that spirit must be a poet, a musician, and a seer — 
a master of melodies, echoes, and long, far-sound- 
ing cadences. Now, as always, it toils to make man 
better, to refine his thought and purify his sym- 
pathy, to broaden his outlook, to lift his altitude, to 
establish in amplitude and resoluteness his life in all 
its relations. All its great history, its vast accumu- 
lations of tradition, its simple faith and its solemn 
rites, its freedom and its friendship are dedicated to 
a high moral ideal, seeking to tame the tiger in man, 
and bring his wild passions into obedience to the 
will of God. It has no other mission than to exalt 
and ennoble humanity, to bring light out of dark- 
ness, beauty out of angularity; to make every hard- 
won inheritance more secure, every sanctuary more 
sacred, every hope more radiant! * 


1If Masons often fall far below their high ideal, it is because 
they share in their degree the infirmity of mankind. He is a poor 
craftsman who glibly recites the teachings of the Order and quickly 
forgets the lessons they convey; who wears its honorable dress to 


290 THE BUILDERS 


The Spirit of Masonry! Ay, when that spirit has 
its way upon earth, as at last it surely will, society 
will be a vast communion of kindness and justice, 
business a system of human service, law a rule of 
beneficence ; the home will be more holy, the laughter 
of childhood more joyous, and the temple of prayer 
mortised and tenoned in simple faith. Evil, in- 
justice, bigotry, greed, and every vile and slimy 
thing that defiles and defames humanity will skulk 
into the dark, unable to bear the light of a juster, 
wiser, more merciful order. Industry will be up- 
right, education prophetic, and religion not a shad- 
ow, but a Real Presence, when man has become ac- 
quainted with man and has learned to worship God 
by serving his fellows. When Masonry is victo- 
rious every tyranny will fall, every bastile crumble, 
and man will be not only unfettered in mind and 
hand, but free of heart to walk erect in the light and 
liberty of the truth. 

Toward a great friendship, long foreseen by Ma- 


conceal a self-seeking spirit; or to whom its great and simple sym- 
bols bring only an outward thrill, and no inward urge toward the 
highest of all good. Apart from what they symbolize, all symbols 
are empty; they speak only to such as have ears to hear. At the 
same time, we have always to remember — what has been so often 
and so sadly forgotten — that the most sacred shrine on earth is the 
soul of man; and that the temple and its offices are not ends in 
themselves, but only beautiful means to the end that every human 
heart may be a temple of peace, of purity, of power, of pity, and 
of hope! 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 291 


sonic faith, the world is slowly moving, amid .diffi- 
culties and delays, reactions and reconstructions. 
Though long deferred, of that day, which will surely 
arrive, when nations will be reverent in the use of 
freedom, just in the exercise of power, humane in 
the practice of wisdom; when no man will ride over 
the rights of his fellows; when no woman will be 
made forlorn, no little child wretched by bigotry 
or greed, Masonry has ever been a prophet. Nor 
will she ever be content until all the threads of hu- 
man fellowship are woven into one mystic cord of 
friendship, encircling the earth and holding the race 
in unity of spirit and the bonds of peace, as in the 
will of God it is one in the origin and end. Having 
outlived empires and philosophies, having seen gen- 
erations appear and vanish, it will yet live to see the 
travail of its soul, and be satisfied — 


When the war-drum throbs no longer, 
And the battle flags are furled; 

In the parliament of man, 
The federation of the world. 


Anu 


Manifestly, since love is the law of life, if men are 
to be won from hate to love, if those who doubt and 
deny are to be wooed to faith, if the race is ever to 
be led and lifted into a life of service, it must be by 
the fine art of Friendship. Inasmuch as this is the 


292 THE BUILDERS 


purpose of Masonry, its mission determines the 
method not less than the spirit of its labor. Earn- 
estly it endeavors to bring men — first the individual 
man, and then, so far as possible, those who are 
united with him — to love one another, while hold- 
ing aloft, in picture and dream, that temple of char- 
acter which is the noblest labor of life to build in the 
midst of the years, and which will outlast time and 
death. Thus it seeks to reach the lonely inner life 
of man where the real battles are fought, and where 
the issues of destiny are decided, now with shouts of 
victory, now with sobs of defeat. What a ministry 
to a young man who enters its temple in the morn- 
ing of life, when the dew of heaven is upon his days 
and the birds are singing in his heart! * 

From the wise lore of the East Max Miiller trans- 
lated a parable which tells how the gods, having 
stolen from man his divinity, met in council to dis- 
cuss where they should hide it. One suggested that 
it be carried to the other side of the earth and 
buried; but it was pointed out that man is a great 
wanderer, and that he might find the lost treasure 
on the other side of the earth. Another proposed 


1 Read the noble words of Arnold on the value of Masonry to 
the young as a restraint, a refinement, and a conservator of virtue, 
throwing about youth the mantle of a great friendship and the con- 
secration of a great ideal (History and Philosophy of Masonry, 
chap. xix). 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 293 


that it be dropped into the depths of the sea; but the 
same fear was expressed — that man, in his insa- 
tiable curiosity, might dive deep enough to find it 
even there. Finally, after a space of silence, the old- 
est and wisest of the gods said: “Hide it in man 
himself, as that is the last place he will ever think to 
look for it!” And it was so agreed, all seeing at 
once the subtle and wise strategy. Man did wander 
over the earth, for ages, seeking in all places high 
and low, far and near, before he thought to look 
within himself for the divinity he sought. At last, 
slowly, dimly, he began to realize that what he 
thought was far off, hidden in “the pathos of dis- 
tance,” is nearer than the breath he breathes, even 
in his own heart. 

Here lies the great secret of Masonry — that it 
makes a man aware of that divinity within him, 
wherefrom his whole life takes its beauty and mean- 
ing, and inspires him to follow and obey it. Once a 
man learns this deep secret, life is new, and the old 
world is a valley all dewy to the dawn with a lark- 
song over it. There never was a truer saying than 
that the religion of a man is the chief fact concerning 
him.’ By religion is meant not the creed to which 
a man will subscribe, or otherwise give his assent; 
not that necessarily; often not that at all— since 


1 Heroes and Hero-worship, by Thomas Carlyle, lecture i. 


294 THE BUILDERS 


we see men of all degrees of worth and worthless- 
ness signing all kinds of creeds. No; the religion 
of a man is that which he practically believes, lays 
to heart, acts upon, and thereby knows concerning 
this mysterious universe and his duty and destiny in 
it. ‘That is in all cases the primary thing in him, 
and creatively determines all the rest; that is his 
religion. It is, then, of vital importance what faith, 
what vision, what conception of life a man lays to 
heart, and acts upon. 

At bottom, a man is what his thinking is, thoughts 
being the artists who give color to our days. Op- 
timists and pessimists live in the same world, walk 
under the same sky, and observe the same facts. 
Sceptics and believers look up at the same great 
stars — the stars that shone in Eden and will flash 
again in Paradise. Clearly the difference between 
them is a difference not of fact, but of faith — of 
insight, outlook, and point of view —a difference 
of inner attitude and habit of thought with regard 
to the worth and use of life. By the same token, 
any influence which reaches and alters that inner 
habit and bias of mind, and changes it from doubt to 
faith, from fear to courage, from despair to sun- 
burst hope, has wrought the most benign ministry 
which a mortal may enjoy. Every man has a train 
of thought on which he rides when he is alone; and 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 295 


the worth of his life to himself and others, as well 
as its happiness, depend upon the direction in which 
that train is going, the baggage it carries, and the 
country through which it travels. If, then, Mason- 
ry can put that inner train of thought on the right 
track, freight it with precious treasure, and start it 
on the way to the City of God, what other or higher 
ministry can it render toa man? And that is what 
it does for any man who will listen to it, love it, and 
lay its truth to heart. 

High, fine, ineffably rich and beautiful are the 
faith and vision which Masonry gives to those who 
foregather at its altar, bringing to them in picture, 
parable, and symbol the lofty and pure truth 
wrought out through ages of experience, tested by 
time, and found to be valid for the conduct of life. 
By such teaching, if they have the heart to heed it, 
men become wise, learning how to be both brave and 
gentle, faithful and free; how to renounce supersti- 
tion and yet retain faith; how to keep a fine poise of 
reason between the falsehood of extremes; how to 
accept the joys of life with glee, and endure its ills 
with patient valor ; how to look upon the folly of man 
and not forget his nobility —in short, how to live 
cleanly, kindly, calmly, open-eyed and unafraid in a 
sane world, sweet of heart and full of hope. Whoso 
lays this lucid and profound wisdom to heart, and 


206 THE BUILDERS 


lives by it, will have little to regret, and nothing to 
fear, when the evening shadows fall. Happy the 
young man who in the morning of his years makes 
it his guide, philosopher, and friend.’ 


Such is the ideal of Masonry, and fidelity to all 


that is holy demands that we give ourselves to it, 
trusting the power of truth, the reality of love, and 
the sovereign worth of character. For only as we 
incarnate that ideal in actual life and activity does it 
become real, tangible, and effective. God works for 
man through man and seldom, if at all, in any other 
way. He asks for our voices to speak His truth, 
for our hands to do His work here below — sweet 
voices and clean hands to make liberty and love pre- 
vail over injustice and hate. Not all of us can be 


1Tf the influence of Masonry upon youth is here emphasized, it 
is not to forget that the most dangerous period of life is not youth, 
,with its turmoil of storm and stress, but between forty and sixty. 
When the enthusiasms of youth have cooled, and its rosy glamour 
has faded into the light of common day, there is apt to be a letting 
down of ideals, a hardening of heart, when cynicism takes the place 
of idealism. If the judgments of the young are austere and need 
to be softened by charity, the middle years of life need still more 
the reénforcement of spiritual influence and the inspiration of a holy 
atmosphere. Also, Albert Pike used to urge upon old men the study 
of Masonry, the better to help them gather up the scattered thoughts 
about life and build them into a firm faith; and because Masonry 
offers to every man a great hope and consolation. Indeed, its min- 
istry to every period of life is benign. Studying Masonry is like 
looking at a sunset; each man who looks is filled with the beauty 
‘and wonder of it, but the glory is not diminished. 


THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 297 


learned or famous, but each of us can be loyal and 
true of heart, undefiled by evil, undaunted by error, 
faithful and helpful to our fellow souls. Life is a 
capacity for the highest things. Let us make it a 
pursuit of the highest — an eager, incessant quest of 
truth; a noble utility, a lofty honor, a wise freedom, 
a genuine service — that through us the Spirit of 
Masonry may grow and be glorified. 

When is a man a Mason? When he can look 
out over the rivers, the hills, and the far horizon 
with a profound sense of his own littleness in the 
vast scheme of things, and yet have faith, hope, and 
courage — which is the root of every virtue. When 
he knows that down in his heart every man is as 
noble, as vile, as divine, as diabolic, and as lonely 
as himself, and seeks to know, to forgive, and to 
love his fellow man. When he knows how to sym- 
pathize with men in their sorrows, yea, even in their 
sins — knowing that each man fights a hard fight 
against many odds. When he has learned how to 
make friends and to keep them, and above all how 
to keep friends with himself. When he loves flow- 
ers, can hunt the birds without a gun, and feels the 
thrill of an old forgotten joy when he hears the 
laugh of a little child. When he can be happy and 
high-minded amid the meaner drudgeries of life. 
When star-crowned trees, and the glint of sunlight 


298 THE BUILDERS 


on flowing waters, subdue him like the thought of 
one much loved and long dead. When no voice of 
distress reaches his ears in vain, and no hand seeks 
his aid without response. When he finds good in 
every faith that helps any man to lay hold of divine 
thing's and sees majestic meanings in life, whatever 
the name of that faith may be. When he can look 
into a wayside puddle and see something beyond 
mud, and into the face of the most forlorn fellow 
mortal and see something beyond sin. When he 
knows how to pray, how to love, how to hope. When 
he has kept faith with himself, with his fellow man, 
with his God; in his hand a sword for evil, in his 
heart a bit of a song — glad to live, but not afraid 
to die! Such a man has found the only real secret 
of Masonry, and the one which it is trying to give 
to all the world. 


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BIBLIOGRAPHY 


(The literature of Masonry is very large, and the follow- 
ing is only a small selection of such books as the writer has 
found particularly helpful in the course of this study. The 
notes and text of the foregoing pages mention many books, 
sometimes with brief characterizations, and that fact renders 
a longer list unnecessary here.) 


Anderson, Book of Constitutions. 

Armitage, Short Masonic History, 2 vols. 
‘Arnold, History and Philosophy of Masonry. 
Ashmole, Diary. 

Aynsley, Symbolism East and West. 

Bacon, New Atlantis, 

Bayley, Lost Language of Symbolism. 

Breasted, Religion and Thought in Egypt. 
Budge, The Gods of Egypt. 

Callahan, Washington, the Man and the Mason. 
Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt. 

Carr, The Swastika. 

Catholic Encyclopedia, art. “Masonry.” 
Churchward, Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man. 
Conder, Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masonry. 
Crowe, Things a Freemason Ought to Know. 
Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra. 

Da Costa, Dionysian Artificers. 

De Clifford, Egypt the Cradle of Masonry. 


302 THE BUILDERS 


De Quincey, Works, vol xvi. 

Dill, Roman Life. 

Encyclopedia Britannica, art. “Freemasonry.” 

Fergusson, History of Architecture. 

Findel, History of Masonry. 

Finlayson, Symbols of Freemasonry. 

Fort, Early History and Antiquities of Masonry. 

Gorringe, Egyptian Obelisks. 

Gould, Atholl Lodges. 

Gould, Concise History of Masonry. 

Gould, History of Masonry, 4 vols. 

Gould, Military Lodges. 

Haige, Symbolism. 

Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion, art. “Freemasonry.” 

Hayden, Washington and his Masonic Compeers. 

Holland, Freemasonry and the Great Pyramid. ~ 

Hope, Historical Essay on Architecture. 

Hughan, History of the English Rite. 

Hughan, Masonic Sketches and Reprints. 

Hughan and Stillson, History of Masonry and Concord- 
ant Orders. 

Futchinson, The Spirit of Masonry. 

Jewish Encyclopedia, art. “Freemasonry.” 

Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions. 

Lawrence, Practical Masonic Lectures. 

Leicester Lodge of Research, Transactions. 

Lethaby, Architecture. 

Lockyear, Dawn of Astronomy. 

Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. * 

Mackey, Symbolism of Masonry. 


rd 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Manchester Lodge of Research, Transactions. 
Marshall, Nature a Book of Symbols. 
Maspero, Dawn of Civilization. 

Mead, Quests New and Old. 

Moehler, Symbolism. 

Moret, Kings and Gods of Egypt. 

Morris, Lights and Shadows of Masonry. 
Morris, The Poetry of Masonry. 

Oliver, Masonic Antiquities. 

Oliver, Masonic Sermons. 

Oliver, Revelations of the Square. ~ 

Oliver, Theocratic Philosophy of Masonry. 
Pike, Morals and Dogma, ~ 
Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride. 
Preston, J/lustrations of Masonry. 


Quatuor Coronati, Lodge, Transactions, 24 vols. 


Ravenscroft, The Comacines. 

Reade, The Veil of Isis. 

Rogers, History of Prices in England. 
Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
Sachse, Franklin as a Mason. 

Sadler, Masonic Facts and Fictions. 
St. Andrew’s Lodge, Centennial Memorial. 
Schure, Hermes and Plato. 

Schure, Pythagoras. 

Scott, The Cathedral Builders. 

Smith, English Guilds. 

Stevens, Cyclopedia of Fraternities. 
Steinbrenner, History of Masonry. 


Tyler, Oaths, Their Origin, Nature, and History. — 


393 


304 THE BUILDERS 


Underhill, Mysticism. 

Waite, Real History of Rosicrucians. 
Waite, Secret Tradition in Masonry. — 
Waite, Studies in Mysticism. 

Watts, The Word in the Pattern. 
Wright, Indian Masonry. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ABERDEEN: lodge of, 161 

Academie Armory: 166 

Accepted Masons: 147; earliest, 
160; not in all lodges, 160 
note; first recorded, 161; and 
Ashmole, 162-4; at Warring- 
ton, 164; in the London Com- 
pany, 165; and the Regius MS, 
166; at Chester, 166; Assem- 
bly of, 168; quality of, 168 

4Aineas: referred to, 44 note 

Ahiman Reson: 216 

Alban, St: in Old Charges, 116; 
a town, not a man, 117 note; 
and the Masons, 120 

America: advent of Masonry in, 
206; spirit of Masonry in, 222; 
influence of Masonry on, 
223 

“Ancients, The’: and Moderns, 
212; Grand Lodge of, 216; 
growth of, 217; merged into 
universal Masonry, 221 

Anderson, James: his account 
of Grand Lodge of England, 
180; and the Old Charges, 
186; sketch of, 187 note; on 
Masonic secrets, 192 note; on 
growth of Masonry, 203; pub- 


lishes Book of Constitutions, 
204 


Andreae, J. V: quoted, 157; his 
Rosicrucian romance, 163 


Anti-Masonic political party, 
228 
Apprentice, Entered: require- 


ments of, 129; moral code of, 
130; masterpiece of, 131; de- 
gree of, 144 
Architects: early, 14; of Rome, 
72; initiates, 73; honored in 
Egypt, 74; College of, 82; 
Comacine, 88; churchmen, 114 
Architecture: matrix of civiliza- 
tion, 5; spiritual basis of, 6; 
Seven Lamps of, 7; moral 
laws of, 8; mysticism of, 9; 
and astronomy, 77; gaps in 
history of, 86; Italian, 87; and 
the Comacines, 88; new light 
on, 89; churchmen learn from 
Masons, 114; Gothic, 120; es- 
say on, 136; influence of Sol- 
omon’s Temple on, 191; no 
older than history, 241 
Ashmole, Elias: Diary of, 162; 
not the maker of Masonry, 
163; student of Masonry, 167 
note; and Walton, 259 note 
Assembly of Masons: at York, 
117; semi-annual, 118; initia- 
tions at, 131; before 1717, 167 


308 


Atheist: does not exist, 261 
note; would be an orphan, 267 

Athelstan: and Masons, 116 

Atholl Masons: Grand Lodge 
of, 216; power of, 217; end of, 
221 

Aubrey, John: 166; on conven- 
tion of Masons, 167 

Augustine, St: and Masons, 116 


BaBEL, TOWER OF: 7 

Bacon, Francis: 110; his New 
Atlantis and Masonry, 179 
note, 190 

Benevolence: Board of, 188 

Bible: Masonic symbols in, 32; 
and Masonry, 265 

Book of Constitutions: 187 

Book of the Dead: 40 

Booth, Edwin: on Third degree, 
197; a Mason, 232 

Boston Tea Party: 224 

Brotherhood: in Old Charges, 
133; creed of Masonry, 134; 
make way for coming of, 282 

Builders: early ideals of, 12; 
tools of, 26; in China, 31; for- 
gotten, 34; orders of, 74; in 
Rome, 79; of cathedrals, 87; 
servants of church, 101; of 
Britain, 113; traveling bands 
of, 135; rallying cries of, 191; 
Longfellow on, 260 

Building: spiritual meaning of, 
6, 7, 8; ideal of, 15; an alle- 
gory, 154; two ways of, 158 
note; of character, 275 


THE BUILDERS 


Burns, Robert: 226; a Mason, 
232; poet of Masonry, 233 


Cantu, CESARE: on Comacines, 
142 

Capart: quoted, 6 

Carlyle, Thomas: quoted, 4 

Cathedral Builders: 87; and 
Masons, 91; greatness of, 121; 
organization of, 136-7; genius 
of, 158 note 

Cathedrals: when built, 121 

Charity: and Masons, 134; a 
doctrine of Masonry, 172 

China: Masonry in, 30 

Christianity: and the Mysteries, 
50, 51 note; and the Collegia, 
85; and Masonry, 221 note, 
251 

Churchward: on Triangle, 13 
note; on symbols, 20 note 

Circle: meaning of, 27 

Clay, Henry: 228 

Cleopatra’s Needle: 33 

Collegia, the: 73; beginning of, 
80; customs of, 81; and the 
Mysteries, 82; emblems of, 
83; and Christianity, 85; and 
cathedral builders, 87; in Eng- 
land, 112; on the continent, 
113 

Column: Wren on, 9; Osiris, 
45; “brethren of the,” 82 

Comacine Masters: 87;  priv- 
ileges of, 88; migrations of, 
89; symbols of, 90; tolerant of 
spirit, 101; and Old Charges, 


INDEX 


111; in England, 113; Mer- 
zana on, 114; and the arts, 
115; degrees among, 142. 

Companionage: of France, 118 
note; and legend of Hiram, 
149 

Conder: historian of Masons’ 
‘Company, 165 

Confucius. 30 

Cooke MS: 106; higher criti- 
cism of, 107 

Cowan: meaning of, 138 note 

Coxe, Daniel: 207 

Craft-masonry: morality of, 
134; lodge of, 135; organiza- 
tion of, 136; routine of, 138; 
technical secrets, 147 

Cromwell, Oliver: and Mason- 
ry, 179 note 

Cross: antiquity of, 24; of 
Egypt, 25 

Cube: meaning of, 27 

Culdees: 189 


Da Costa: quoted, 72; on Dion- 
ysian Artificers, 77 note 

Deacon: office of, 217 

Death: old protest against, 40; 
triumph over, 41; wonder of, 
278 

Declaration of Independence, 
signed by Masons, 225 


Defence of Masonry: quoted 
152 

Degrees in Masonry: 141; 
among Comacines, 142; of 


Apprentice, 144; number of, 
145; evolution of, 149 


309 


De Molai: 101 

De Quincey on Masonry, 179 
note 

Dermott, Lawrence: and An- 
cient Grand Lodge, 216; in- 
dustry of, 219; and Royal 
Arch Masonry, 220 note 

Desaguliers, Dr. J. T: “co-fab- 
ricator of Masonry,” 195; 
sketch of, 195 note 

Diocletian: fury of against Ma- 
sons, 85 

Dionysian Artificers: 72; build- 
ers of Solomon’s Temple, 76; 
evidence for, 77 note; migra- 
tions of, 79 

Dissensions in Masonry: bitter, 
213; causes of, 214; led by 
Preston, 217; helped the or- 
der, 219; remedy for, 222 

Doctrine: the Secret, 57; resent- 
ed, 58; open to all, 61; rea- 
sons for, 63; what it is, 68 

Drama of Faith: 39; motif of, 
41; story of, 42; in India, 44 
note; in Tyre, 76 

Druids: Mysteries of, 49 

Druses: and Masonry, 78 note 

Dugdale: on formality in Ma- 
sonry, 143 

EAVESDROPPERS: their punish- 
ment, 138 note 

Egypt: earliest artists of, 9; 
Herodotus on, 10; temples of, 
11; obelisks of, 13; Drama of 
Faith in, 41; and origin of 
Masonry, 105, 109 note 


310 


Elizabeth, Queen: and Masons, 
123 note ; 

Emerson, R. W: 39, 57 

Euclid: mentioned in Regius 
MS, 105; in Cooke MS, 107 

Evans: on sacred stones, 9 

Exposures of Masonry, 210 


FAERIE QUEENE: quoted, 155 

Faith: Drama of, 39; philosophy 
of, 270 

Fellowcraft: points of, 128; 
rank of, 131; degree of, 146 

Fichte: a Mason, 232 

Findel: list of cartoons, 99 notc; 
on Apprentice degree, 145 

Francis of Assisi: quoted, 173 

Franklin, B: on Masonic grips, 
200; Masonic items in his pa- 
per, 207; Grand Master of 
Pennsylvania, 207; his Auto- 
biography, 207 note 

Frederick the Great: and Ma- 
sonry, 205 note 

Free-masons: 87; why called 
free, 88; Furgusson on, 90; 
Hallam on, 96; free in fact 
before name, 98; great artists, 
99; cartoons of the church by, 
99 note; early date of name, 
104 note; not Guild-masons, 
118; contrasted with Guild- 
masons, 119; organization of, 
136; degrees among, 142-4 

Friendship: Masonry defined as, 
240; genius of Masonry, 284; 
in Masonic literature, 285; the 


THE BUILDERS 


ideal of Masonry, 288; as a 
method of work, 291 

Furgusson, James: 90; on tem- 
ple of Solomon, 191 


G: the letter, 159 

Garibaldi: 230 

Geometry: in Old Charges, 108; 
Pythagoras on, 154; and re- 


ligion, 154 mote; mystical 
meaning of, 159 

Gladden, Washington: quoted, 
285 


Gloves: use and meaning of, 
137 note 

God: ideas of, 22; “the Builder,” 
29; invocations to in old MSS, 
108, note; Fatherhood of, 134; 
the Great Logician, 157; unity 
of, 176 note, 264; foundation 
of Masonry, 261; the corner 
stone, 262; Masonry does not 
limit, 263; wonder of, 267; 
kinship of man _ with, 270; 
friendship for, 284 

Goethe: 232 

Golden Rule: law of Master 
Mason, 133; creed of, 256 

Gormogons: order of, parody on 
Masonry, 209; swallows itself, 
211 

Gothic architecture: 120; decline 
of, 185 

Gould, R. F: on Regius MS, 
106; on York Assembly, 116 
note; on early speculative Ma- 
sonry, 160 


INDEX 


Grand Lodge of all England, 
218 

Grand Lodge of England: 173; 
meaning of organization, 174; 
background of, 176; its atti- 
tude toward religion, 177; or- 
ganization of, 180; Lodges of, 
181; facts about, 182; usages 
of, 183; regalia of, 183 note; 
a London movement, 184; 
leaders of, 185; charity of, 
188; growth of, 202; prolific 
mother, 204; article on poli- 
tics, 208; rivals of, 213 

Grand Lodge South of Trent, 
218 

Grand Master: office of, 182; 
power of, 202 

Green Dragon Tavern: 223; a 
Masonic Lodge, 224 

Gregory, Pope: and Masons, 113 

Grips: in the Mysteries, 47; 
among Druses, 78 note; among 
Masons, 140; antiquity of, 149 
note; number of, 141; Frank- 
lin on, 200; an aid to charity, 
244 

Guild-masonry: 98; invocations 
in, 108; not Freemasonry, 
118; truth about, 119; morality 
of, 144 


HattamM: on Freemasonry, 96; 
on Guilds, 118 

Halliwell, James: 
MS: 104 

Hamilton, Alexander: 225 


and Regius 


311 
Hammer, House of: 28 
Handbuch, German: on Ma- 
sonry, 241 


Harleian MS: quoted, 126; in 
Holme’s hand-writing, 166 
Hermes: named in Cooke MS, 
108; and Pythagoras, 110; 

who was he, 194 

Herodotus: on Egypt, 10; re- 
ferred to in Cooke MS, 107 

Hiram Abif: 77 note; not nam- 
ed in Old Charges, 109; eso- 
teric allusions to, 110; legend 
of in France, 118 note; and 
the Companionage, 149; and 
the temple, 192 

Hiram I, of Tyre: 75 

History: Book of in China, 30; 
like a mirage, 100; no older 
than architecture, 241 

Holme, Randle: 166 

Horus: story of, 42; heroism of, 
45 

Hutchinson, William: on Ge- 
ometry, 154 note; on Chris- 
tianity and Masonry, 251 note; 
on Spirit of Masonry, 258 


IDEALISM: soul of Masonry, 269; 
no dogma of in Masonry, 269 
note; basis of, 270 

Ikhnaton: city of, 12; poet and 
idealist, 14 

Immortality: faith in old, 39; in 
Pyramid Texts, 40; allegory 
of, 46; in the Mysteries, 49; 
creed of Masonry, 134; held 


312 


by Masons, 179; how Ma- 
sonry teaches, 277 
Instructions of a Parish Priest: 
106 
Invocations: Masonic, 108 note 
Isis: story of, 42; and Osiris, 
43; sorrow of, 45; in Myster- 
ies, 47 


Jackson, ANDREW: 228 

Jesuits: and Masons, 210 note; 
attempt to expose Masonry, 
211 


KaBBALAH: muddle of, 67 

Kabbalists: used Masonic sym- 
bols, 156, 157 

Kennedy, C. R: quoted, 238 

Kipling, Rudyard: 232 

Krause: on Collegia, 79 


Lecenp: of Solomon, 75; in Old 
Charges, 111; of Pythagoras, 
112; of Masonry unique, 128 

Lessing, G E: quoted, 56; theory 
of, 179 note; a Mason, 232 

Lethaby: on discovery’ of 
Square, 10 

Liberty: and law, 7; love of, 
122; of thought, 178; civil and 
Masonry, 224; in religion, 252; 
of faith, 255; philosophy of, 
271; Lowell on, 272; of intel- 
lect, 273; of soul, 274 

Litchfield, Bishop of: 175 

Locke, John: 232 

Lodge: of Roman architects, 82; 


THE BUILDERS 


of Comacines, 90; a school, 
129; secrecy of, 132; enroute, 
135; organization of, 136; de- 
grees in, 146 

Longfellow: quoted, 260 

Lost Word: 67; Masonic search 
of, 263 

Lowell: on liberty, 272 


Mackey, Dr: on Craft-masonry, 
251 note; definition of Ma- 
sonry, 240 

Magnus, Albertus: 156 

Man: the builder, 6; a poet, 19; 
an idealist, 26; akin to God, 
270; divinity of, 292; thoughts 
of artists, 204; ideal of, 297 

Markham, Edwin: quoted, 282 

Marshall, John: 225 

Martyrs, the Four Crowned: 86; 
honored by Comacines, 90; in 
Regius MS, 105 

Masonry Dissected: 212 

Masonry: foundations of, 15; 
symbolism its soul, 18; in 
China, 30; symbols of in obe- 
lisk, 33; and the Mysteries, 
53; secret tradition in, 66; and 
the Quest, 69; and Solomon’s 
temple, 79; persecution of by 
Diocletian, 85; and the Coma- 
cines, 90; not new in Middle 
Ages, 97; and tolerance, 100; 
and the church, 102; antiquity 
of emphasized, 110; legend of, 
111; and Pythagoras, 112; in 
England, 116; in Scotland, 


INDEX 


123; decline of, 124; moral 
teaching of, 128-134; creed of, 
134; degrees in, 142-4; not a 
patch-work, 149 note; an evo- 
lution, 150; defence of, 153; 
symbols of in language, 155; 
and Rosicrucianism, 164 note; 
parable of, 173; transforma- 
tion of, 176; and religion, 177; 
theories about, 179 note; de- 
mocracy of, 183; more than a 
trade, 185; mysticism of, 189 
note; and Hermetic teaching, 
194; universal, 201; rapid 
spread of, 204; early in Amer- 
ica, 206; not a political party, 
208; parody on, 209; attempt- 
ed exposures of, 210-13; 
growth of despite dissensions, 
219-20; unsectarian, 221 note; 
in America, 223; and the War 
of Revolution, 225; and Mor- 
gan, 227-8; and Civil War, 228; 
in literature, 232 note; defin- 
ed, 239-40; as friendship, 240; 
best definition of, 241; de- 
scription of, 242; has no se- 
cret, 244; misunderstood, 245; 
more than a church, 250; 
crypt, 253; temple of, 260; 
philosophy of, 262; and unity 
of God, 273; its appeal, 283; 
and friendship, 288; spirit of, 
289; wisdom of, 295; ideal of, 
297. 

Masons: and Comacines, 90; 
Hallam on, 96; denied their 


313 


due, 99 note; culture of, 100; 
and Knights Templars, 101 
note; first called free, 104; 
persecuted, 122; technical se- 
crets of, 147; customs of, 166 

Masons’ Company: 104; date of, 
123; and Accepted Masons, 
165 

Mason’s Marks: 131 note 

Maspero: on Egyptian temples, 11 

Master Mason; dnd _ Fellows, 
128 note; oath of, 133; dress 
of, 135 

Masterpiece of Apprentice: 131 

Master’s Part: 148; in Third 
Degree, 193 

Materialism: and Masonry, 268 

Mazzini: 230 

Mencius: 30 

Merzaria, Giuseppe: on Coma- 
cine Masters: 114 

Metamorphoses, by Apuleius: 51 

Montague, Duke of: elected 
Grand Master, 185 

Morgan, William: and Masonry, 
227; excitement about, 292 
note 

Mysteries, The: origin of, 46; 
nobility of, 47; teaching of, 
48; spread of, 49; and St. 
Paul, 50; corruption of, 51; 
Plato on, 52; and Masonry, 
53; temples of, 59; Moses 
learned in, 76; and Hebrew 
faith, 77; and Masonic ritual, 
110; and the Third Degree, 
196, 203 


314 

Mystery-mongers: 60; fancies 
of, 164 

Mystery of Masonry Discover- 
ed: 210 

Mysticism: 60 note; of Hermet- 
ics, 164; its real nature, 189 
note 

Muller, Max: quoted, 253; par- 
able of, 292 


Nathan the Wise: quoted, 56 

Numbers: use of by Pythagoras, 
48 note; and religious faith, 
153; in nature, 154; and mys- 
ticism, 159 


OatuH: in the Mysteries, 48; in 
Harleian MS, 126; of Ap- 
prentice, 129; of Fellowcraft, 
132; of Master Mason, 133 

Obelisks: meaning of, 13; Ma- 
sonic symbols in, 33 

Occultism: 60 note; and Ma- 
sonry, 164 

Old Charges: 102; number of, 
103; the oldest of, 104; higher 
criticism of, 107-9; value of, 
111; and English Masonry, 
116; moral teaching of, 128- 
34; collated by Grand Lodge, 
186 

Oldest Mason honored: 181 

Operative Masons: degrees of, 
142; and_ speculative, 144; 
lodges of, 148; and Wren, 
167 note; still working, 201 
note 


THE BUILDERS 


Oracles: Cessation of, 28 

Orient, Grand of France: not 
atheistic, 261 

Osiris: in trinity of Egypt, 23; 
history of, 41; and Isis, 43; 
death of, 44; resurrection of, 
46; in Tyre, 76 


PaInE, THOMAS: 225 note 

Payne, George: Grand Master, 
187 

Philosophy: “blend of poetry, 
science and religion,” 259; of 
Masonry, 264-68; of faith, 
270 

Pike, Albert: on symbolism of 
‘Masonry, 18; on Regius MS, 
106; error of as to Guild-ma- 
sonry, 158 note; on symbolism 
before 1717, 159; on Third De- 
gree, 193; on atheism, 261 
note; on old men and Ma- 
sonry, 296 note 

Pillars: origin of, 28; meaning 
of, 29; Isaac Walton on, 259 
note 

Plott, Dr: on Masonic customs, 
166 

Plutarch: on Square, 28; an in- 
itiate, 42; and the Mysteries, 
46; on Pythagoras symbol, 
143 

Pole Star: cult of, 24 

Politics: and Masons, 179; for- 
bidden in Lodges, 208; rela- 
tion of Masonry to, 245, 248 

Pompeii: collegium in, 83 


INDEX 


Pope, Alexander: Moral Essays 
quoted, 210; a Mason, 263 
Popes, the: and Masonry, 113, 
122; bull of against Masonry, 
211 

Prayer: in Masonry, 179, 244 

Preston, William: 182; defeated, 
218 

“Protestant Jesuits”: 
called, 210 note 

Pyramids: wonder of, 13; lone- 
liness of, 28 

Pyramid Texts: quoted, 40 


Masons 


QuEst, THE: aspects of, 65; 
analysis of, 67; in Masonry, 69 


ReEapE, Winwoop: quoted, 172 

Reconciliation, Lodge of: 221 

Regius MS: oldest Masonic 
MS, 104; synopsis of, 105; 
Pike on, 106; Mason’s points 
in, 128; and Accepted Masons, 
160 

Religion: of light, 14; decline 
of, 176; and Craft-masonry, 
176; and Grand Lodge of 
England, 250; what is it, 251 
note; in which all agree, 255; 
of nature, 258; what we prac- 
tically believe, 293 

Ritual: Old Charges part of, 
128; growth of, 142-4; evolu- 
tion of, 219 note 

Rome: secret orders in, 81; col- 
lege of architects in, 86 

Rosicrucians: use Masonic sym- 


315 


bols, 156, 157; and Ashmole, 
163; distinct from Masons, 
164; and De Quincey, 179 


note; and Third Degree, 190 
Royal Arch Masonry: 220 note 
Ruskin, John: quoted, 7, 8; on 

light, 14 note; on the church, 

250 


St. Joun’s Day: 181; origin of, 
183, note 
Sayer, Anthony: first Grand 
Master, 182 

Schaw Statutes: 123 

Sciences; the seven, 
Cooke MS, 108 

Scott, Leader: quoted, 72; on 
Cathedral Builders, 87; on 
‘Comacines and Masonry, 111 

Scott, Sir Walter: on the word 
cowan, 138 note; a Mason, 
232 

Secrecy: of the Mysteries, 48; 
of great teachers, 57; as to the 
arts, 74; not real power of 
Masonry, 212; reasons for, 
243 note 

Secret Doctrine: 57, objections 
to, 59; open to all, 61; reasons 
for, 63; what is it, 68 

Secret Sermon on the Mount: 47 

Sectarianism: Masonry against, 
254 

Seven Lamps of Architecture: 
quoted, 7 

Shakespeare: 155; and Masons, 
259 note 


195; in 


316 
Shelley: 14 
Signs: in the Mysteries, 47; 


Franklin on, 200; and charity, 
244 

Socrates: on unity of mind, 21; 
and the Mysteries, 46 

Solomon: and Hiram, 75; and 
the Comacines, 89; in Cooke 
MS, 109; sons of, 149 

Solomon: Temple of, 75; style 
of, 76; legends of, 77 note; 
and Masonry, 79; influence of 
on architecture, 191 

Speculative Masonry: in Regius 
MS, 106; growth of, 123; 
meaning of, 144 note; Lodges 
of, 148; before 1717, 167 

Spenser, Edmund: Masonic 
symbols in, 155 

Square: discovery of, 10; in 
Pyramids, 13; eloquence of, 
26; emblem of truth, 28; in 
China;730s in.) -obelisk:71/33- 
throne of Osiris, 46; “square 
men,” 155; an ancient one, 
159; of justice, 275 

Staffordshire; Natural History 
of, quoted: 166 

Steinmetzen, of Germany: 118 
note; degree of, 145 

Stones: sanctity of, 28 

Stuckely: Diary of, 203 

Swastika: antiquity of, 23; 
meaning of, 24; sign of Op- 
erative Masons, 201 note 

Symbolism: Carlyle on, 4; early 
Masonic, 11; Pike on, 18; 
richness of, 20; unity of, 21; 


THE BUILDERS 


Mencius on, 30; in Bible, 31; 
of Collegia, 93; of Comacines, 
90; in Masonry, 143; of num- 
bers, 154; in language, 155; in 
Middle Ages, 156; preserved 
by Masons, 159 


TAYLOR, JEREMY: 175 note 

Third Degree: legend of, 149; 
confusion about, 189; purely 
Masonic, 193; Pike on, 193; 
not made but grew, 196; and 
Ancient Mysteries, 196; Ed- 
win Booth on, 197; and im- 
mortality, 277 

Tiler: 135; origin of name, 138 
note 

Tolstoi : 232 

Tools of Masons: 26; old mean- 
ings of, 29; in Bible, 32; kit 
of, 132 

Tradition: of Solomon, 75; of 
Masonry unique, 128; of de- 
grees, 144 

Triangle: probable meaning of, 
13 note; used by Spenser, 155 

Trinity: idea of old, 22; in 
Egypt and India, 23; not op- 
posed to unity of God, 264 
note 


Unity: of human mind, 21; of 
truth, 58; of God and Ma- 
sonry, 176 note, 264 

Umiversal Prayer: quoted, 263 

Unsectarian: the genius of 
Masonry, 221): /250,) 252, j2bar 
258 


INDEX 


Wairt, A. E: 38; tribute to, 64; 
on the quest, 65; studies of, 
66; “golden dustman,” 67 

War: and Masonry, 225; Civil, 
228, 229 note; cause of, 287; 
end of, 202 

Warren, Joseph: ardent Mason, 
224 

Washington, George: a Mason, 
225; sworn into office by Ma- 
son, 226 

Watts, G. F: 174 

Webster, Daniel: on Green Tav- 
ern, 224 

Weed, Thurlow: and Masonry, 
227 note; dirty trickster, 228 


317 


Wellington: a Mason, 232 

Wesley, John: 175 

Wharton, Duke of: traitor, 224 

Wiltshire, Natural History of: 
quoted, 166 

Wren, Christopher: on columns, 
9; and Masonry, 167 note; not 
trained in a Lodge, 186 


York: Bishop of, 113; Assembly 
of, 117; old Grand Lodge of, 
204; Mecca of Masonry, 205; 
revival of Grand Lodge of, 
215; no rite of, 216 note 


ZOROASTER: faith of, 22 


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